Gloria – Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

Running in the Venice Biennale. The biggest and most illusive artist dream is to be in the biennale, and one never knows how they might get here. Never in a million years would I think running would get me here.

I arrived on Sunday and look the waterbus to Lido. Lido is kind of like Brooklyn to Manhattan. The biennale is just two waterbus, vaporetti, stops from the apartment. It was cool and rainy so I was not sure if I could run on the tank. Fortunately it cleared up and I did two “performances.” It was really cool. I wanted to start laughing but I had to stay serious and keep my head up looking at the lamppost. Seeing the tank tracks moving under me incited a bit of vertigo.

I watched Sadie and Dave’s performances after mine, they are really cool. The pavilion rooms are small and you are very close up to the performers. There is huge tension in the room. You can hear and see them breathing, feel the pressure when they are balancing on the airline seat sculptures. We each perform for 15 minutes, first me, then Sadie, then Dave, then me again. Clearly I have it easy and don’t need much skill to run. The treadmill is very slow only on 5 mph because the tank shakes. This lets me practice quick turnover to make it look like I am running faster, with 180 steps per minute. Clearly Said and Dave have the real skill.
They have been performing all summer and previous to the exhibition were choreographing.

Got to run, it is time for me to go again. More later