THE NAKED CITY – BIENNALE’S EMBASSY BRAND!
Remember the old Coles “Embassy Brand”? Everything from toothpaste to exercise books given that stamp of quality with the Embassy seal of approval. Okay, not everybody has been around for that long but the word does evoke some kind of passport to adventure, an exotic destination and a life reinvented––or maybe just a jar of greasy old hair cream.
Whatever its connotation, the 20th Biennale of Sydney has seized upon this brand power to label its various venues around Sydney as collectively the “Seven Embassies of Thought”. There’s our favourite ex-toxic dump, Cockatoo Island, billed as the “Embassy of the Real”; the gothic-like Mortuary Station at Central, aptly dubbed the “Embassy of Transition”; and the Art Gallery of NSW, packed with the ghosts of a thousand dead artists, appropriately titled “The Embassy Of Spirits” (we hope they’re not methylated!).
Some may think it’s all a bunch of arty farty pretence, but we have to admit we rather love the idea. After all embassies have definitely been in the news of late, in particular London’s Ecuadorian, where Julian Assange has long been a prisoner, and ‘thought’ is no doubt his primary preoccuptation. Whether this well celebrated incarceration of the intellect has inspired the Biennale is open to question, but the ‘embassy’ tag certainly works for us.
Rather than contain the Sydney Biennale’s array of wacky installations, performance art and other indecipherables to these seven ordained venues, we would love to see the “embassy” theme reach out into the broader community. After all the philosophy of the Biennale is to engage the world at large through the medium of art, highlighting all that is good, bad and questionable.
Woolloomooloo’s Walla Mulla Park, with its towering graffiti daubed murals and colourful itinerant population, would be the perfect spot for the “Embassy Of Indifference”. Renowned for its daily shouting matches and occasional boozy melees, it would be the ideal location for some Biennale performance art. Civic leaders, like our own Lord Mayor, who opened the cosmetic makeover of the park some years ago, could be all be invited to participate in a kind of flashmob primal scream––a massive sonic metaphor of apathy that would echo throughout the suburb, waking even the homeless from their daytime slumber.
The recent announcement that James Packer’s casino monstrosity at Barangaroo is running years behind schedule would certainly provide a window of opportunity for the “Embassy Of Greed and Vulgarity”, constructed entirely out of donated Lego by Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. At the end of the Biennale, Sydneysiders could enjoy their own “Burning Man” moment when the towering plastic skyscraper is ignited, melting ingloriously to the ground, musically accompanied by a soundtrack of Mariah Carey’s greatest hits.
Finally as a tribute to the spiritual home of the Biennale in Venice, we would kill to see a living “Embassy Of The Avian Disruption”. There’s a famous postcard of pigeons spelling out the words ‘Coca Cola’ in St Mark’s Square, after birdseed was strategically placed. Here in Sydney, we can surely do much better, attracting all matter of local birdlife––ibis, pigeons, cockatoos and even those much maligned magpies. Redolent of Jeff Koon’s famous topiary puppy, this living display outside the MCA could be orchestrated (with birdseed and bread crumbs) to spell out the word “BOLLOCKS”––on the hour, every hour. A witty comment on the world of contemporary art and the sheer absurdity of life.
