DISPATCH: PROPOSITION BIENNALE

"So, the Biennale is fancy, right? Every country sends an artist or two to represent its best creative minds. It's hosted in several places around the city, but primarily the ornamental gardens with these permanent buildings for each country.

1. Spain was first, of course. The magnificent art in their building was in the form of three piles of stupidity. Wood chips, dirt, bricks. BRILLIANT!

2. Belgium was actually great. I have been affectionately referring to the singular, huge piece in their building as "Meat Tree," which is pretty much what it sounds like: a huge, huge fallen tree sculpture made to look like it was cut from a thousand animals and held down with sand bags.

3. United States. Organized office supplies. A lot of string.

4. Israel. YES. Most impressive was a film of several people sculpting their own heads out of clay. These heads were monstrous and insane. One middle aged woman shaved her head, put the hair on her sculpture-self, put clay all over her actual face...and screamed into the microphone that she violently jammed into the clay head. SURPRISE TWIST! Everyone violently jammed a microphone somewhere into their self portraits! And they all moaned, cried, screamed, gurgled, whatever, into the microphone as the audio portion of their portraits -- in this film. THE OTHER video was of a fucking DJ remixing their moaning...endlessly. The third part was the actual sculptures, which were in some corner and absolutely not the point of the exhibit. And the final part was a giant fucking hole someone dug into the floor, and who knows why that was there.

5. The Etsy Pavilion, which is almost certainly not actually called that, was pretty great. Inside, a wealth of weird doll houses, a print of a fishsnailicorn, a huge mural that includes a skeleton flipping the bird, someone's sketch of their dad in drag, and some other shit I took pictures of.

Today and the next couple days are sort of the pre-party for this thing. It's all press passes and critics. Uma-Thurman-in-Pulp-Fiction haircuts with white linen tunics and big beaded necklaces, all of the mercilessly expensive glasses intentionally made to look cheap, all of the haute couture blazers in awkward sizes, all of the avant garde uncomfortable shoes, huge expensive cameras and film crews, self-important conversations about art left and right, exclusive promotional materials... AND YOURS TRULY AS THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR MIDWESTERN SLOBS WHO GET WEIRD IN HUMIDITY! I spent most of my time pulling out my weird little tourist camera and blocking the shots of the professional photographers for The Times or whomever. They loved that. But! Then it became clear that there were press packs! GUESS WHO DOESN'T NEED TO BUY EXPENSIVE ITALIAN SOUVENIRS ANYMORE!!! I went around scooping up all the swag bags and fliers and offending everyone by wanting their fancy goods for no reason. I have four tote bags with weird phrases on them so far, and I hope to get more.

The best part was actually leaving. A guy who looks like *****'s dad in a construction vest and ball cap silently hands you a tiny flyer with random letters on it. About fifty feet later, an identical man TAKES IT FROM YOU QUIETLY AND SPEEDILY AND BY FORCE IF NECESSARY. When you look back at them to try and understand what the fuck just happened, you can seen that the backs of their vests list the letters on the flier, one matching it, the other in the opposite order. My secret hope is that one of these men was actually *****'s dad. If so, dude, I am sorry your dad is so into rewarding people with material goods and then stealing away their brand new possessions almost instantly that he came to Italy to be an art about it. Growing up with that kind of values probably fucked you up pretty bad. (But seriously, that was the best, most simple, impressive, effective piece I've maybe ever seen. I watched them do this for a while, and the concept of give and take outside the gates of ALL OF THE PRIVILEGE and ALL OF THE FREE SHIT was fucking brilliant. People were really confused and annoyed, or conversely super entertained.

There was also an Indian guy lighting spaghetti noodles on fire and putting them in a row on the ground very, very carefully.

I found tiny, crustless tuna sandwiches with olives for two euros each, in a sort of cafeteria place that looked like a set for some kind of Pee Wee Herman nightmare. I ate three while I listened to some rich old lady talk about board meetings and traveling and charity events and lighthearted upper class problems about pretend stresses. I was really happy to see that her bajillion dollar white leather Prada jacket had some kind of red shit from the table all over the sleeve that was definitely going to stain it forever.

I came back to the apartment and almost immediately ate like twenty dried apricots in the bathtub, so I'm probably going to shit myself pretty soon."

recap.