Karl Marx is omnipresent at the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia. In the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, the "Das Kapital Oratorio" is being read three times a day by trained actors. The Oratorio is directed by artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien. This non-stop program starts with a live reading of the four volumes of Marx’s Das Kapital and gradually expands into recitals of work songs, librettos, readings of scripts, discussions, plenaries, and film screenings devoted to diverse theories and explorations of Capital. IISH provided scans of documents from the Marx-Engels archive for the exhibition catalogue.
The thematic filter Reading Kapital also informed the selection of artworks like Labor in a Single Shot by Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann, the film KAPITAL by Isaac Julien, Paperwork, and the Will of Capital by Taryn Simon, Non Consumiamo… (to Luigi Nono) by Olaf Nicolai, A Marx Archive by Madhusudhanan, and many other works.
Find more information about the Marx' Das Kapital Oratorio in Venice program on the website of la Biennale.
Photo by Andrea Avezzù - Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia
Visitors of the 56th Biennale in Venice may want to take a look at the two-channel film (channel 1: 82 mins; channel 2: 17 mins) Last Man in Dhaka Central (The Young Man Was, Part 3) made by Naeem Mohaiemen with the help of the IISH in the Giardini, Palazzo delle Espozione. In this film, the Dutch academic and activist Peter Custers tells about his experiences in Bangladesh in the 1970s.
- General info on the Biennale Art Exhibition