A Break From Art: With Fangs

The Extended Pavilion

Being an art enthusiast has historically been respected in societies around the world, with art exhibitions being considered high-brow cultural events. Regarding the world's most prominent art events, the Venice Biennale is in a league of its own. My life revolves around the arts, and these days I exist entirely consumed in its realm. As I sit in Hildigunnur Birgisdottir's pavilion, I realise I have swallowed its meaning whole. In the majority of pavilions, interns are tucked into the corners avoiding any disruption to their country´s display, but Birgisdóttir has put us in the middle of her spectacle where we cannot be overlooked.

The exhibition title is That's a Very Large Number, an installation of works concerning our culture of consumption, and the relationship between people and items that are mass-produced for us as consumers. In Birgisdóttir's practice, she works with found objects, her show at the Biennale being no exception. Enlarged packaging, a recycled floor panel imprinted with logos, learning tools for children made from plastic, and Barbie toys adorn the walls. With each increasing moment I spend gazing upon her works, the more I discover about them. I have projected my own opinion onto them, simultaneously creating my own meaning. The longer I am situated at the pavilion, the more I feel as if her show carries a parallel conceptual meaning beyond what one perceives at first glance. Birigirsdóttir´s show has evolved into a critique of the politics surrounding art exhibitions. 

The artist has removed a wall covering a window of the pavilion, previously put there by the Biennale. Over the canal facing the window, Hildigunnur has placed a live screen video work, visible only by looking out of the previous “white cube space”. By doing so she has extended the exhibition throughout the window, and over the canal. The video work is titled Approx. 7% (2024) and is a livestream from an advertisement billboard on a street in Reykjavík, Iceland. She has not only extended the exhibition through the window, but also back to Iceland from Venice, only to show the audience advertisements.

The exhibition has extended itself into the depths of my head. Because of Birgisdóttir's works, my perception has changed of everyday items such as advertisements. I´ve begun speculating about marketing and the use of everyday items. Why are they here? What is their target audience? Is it art? When your existence revolves around art, art becomes your existence. At the pavilion I have greeted countless sweaty exhibition visitors. Arsenale is large, and the visitors come in at the end of their visit proclaiming they cannot possibly ingest more art. My reply is more often than not: I know, it's such a marathon! and every visitor nods their head. And after a long run, one needs rest.

I need my oasis in this desert of art and my interest in The Vampire Diaries serves as my escape; my way of turning the off button in my brain after a day of overthinking and overconsuming art.

The Rise of Internet Culture

I am a part of the generation of the internet. Cyberspace and social media have always served me as an escape. When I was an adolescent, there was nothing else that could calm me as well as my online playground. My peers and I spent our childhood in cyberspace until it became routine to meet your friends in chat rooms instead of the outside world to play. 

The Vampire Diaries aired its first episode while I was in primary school, fifteen years ago. The show is a teenage soap opera about brothers Stefan and Damon Salvatore as they return to the town Mystic Falls, Virginia after a doppelganger of an ex-girlfriend of theirs is discovered. The brothers are two-hundred-year-old vampires being followed by a string of supernatural beings such as witches, werewolves, ghouls, and all sorts of hybrids of the previously mentioned creatures. 

The show is far from being considered high-brow culturally, rather lowbrow at best. The dialogue is simple, each character dies and comes back to life and the storyline becomes increasingly more surreal with every episode. It is as if the writers ran out of ideas as the show gained popularity. The notorious vampire book and movie series Twilight, which premiered around the same time fifteen years ago shares a similar plot. 

As a byproduct of the ironic nature of internet culture, Twilight has experienced a momentum of renaissance in the last few years. On social media platforms such as TikTok one can see young people elevate the book and movie series by buying merchandise and tattooing quotes to their bodies. Fans have been ruminating over philosophical theories and dissecting the series as they would high-brow literature and artworks. The same thing can be said about The Vampire Diaries, even though the show hasn't quite yet achieved the same level of “fandemonium” as its vampire counterpart. Therefore the show has not become the cultural icon that it deserves to be.  

One theory about this vampire renaissance; amongst others, is that vampire series have become so „tacky“ that they've become cool again. Notions of nostalgia for simpler times of the internet generation have also contributed to its revival. This explains why the Salvatore brothers have won my attention while my physical existence is in an art exhibition.