Creative Cogitation

What I would do dif­fer­ently…  The Real Bien­nale Expe­ri­ence:

I par­tic­i­pated in the 2009 Flo­rence Bien­nale; these rumi­na­tions result from my first hand expe­ri­ence of that event.

As you read the fol­low­ing please keep in mind I found the Bien­nale to be a per­son­ally and artis­ti­cally enrich­ing expe­ri­ence.  I did enjoy talk­ing to the other artists about their work and lives.  My feel­ings as of this moment in time, which is imme­di­ately after the event, are gen­er­ally positive.

All that said, here are the down­sides in a nutshell…

• Ship­ping art to the Bien­nale can be prob­lem­atic for peo­ple liv­ing out­side of Europe.
• The costs in total are expen­sive. Right around half of what I spent was on the artist’s share, about $4,000; the artist’s share is NOT refund­able whether you actu­ally attend or not.
• Given that I charged about $8,000 for this trip, I don’t know if the finan­cial side of this ven­ture will even­tu­ally prove mer­i­to­ri­ous or not.
• There are rumors of a scan­dal, which I have NOT been able to ver­ify, and that the city of Flo­rence may stop back­ing the Flo­rence Bien­nale.  Please keep in mind I really have no per­sonal knowl­edge if this is true or not and as for me I enjoyed par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Flo­rence Biennale.
• Some artists think the Bien­nale should do more for the artists and they may have a point.  Con­sider: My esti­mate based on the Biennale’s own report of par­tic­i­pants num­bers and the cost of the artist’s share that they received at least 1.5 mil­lion Euro (US $2.25 mil­lion) from the artists for this show. That said…
  • The reg­u­la­tions stated there would be one chair per artist, but many artists spent the show swip­ing unat­tended chairs so they could sit down a while-perhaps a few extra chairs for spouses who join the artist on this trip would be in order?
  • Of my own per­sonal knowl­edge, at least 2 artists stood in the rain for a least an hour wait­ing for some­one to tell them where they could store their card board boxes.
  • In gen­eral I did not see adver­tis­ing for the Bien­nale other than the signs on the Fortezza da Basso itself, and one bill­board at the air­port.  Many locals had no idea what I was talk­ing about. How­ever, my obser­va­tions regard­ing the Biennale’s efforts at mar­ket­ing are anec­do­tal at best.
  • Some artist’s pack­ets were miss­ing things like signs for their artwork.
  • Some artists were slated to show who didn’t make it, yet were sev­eral pre­mium dis­play areas, more toward the cen­ter & around the Café in the pavil­ion  that remained empty through­out the show.  In the mean­time there were artists whose work was in ter­ri­ble loca­tions, but the Bien­nale did not seem to want to move any­one into those pre­mium locations.

Those are the down­sides as I per­ceived them, you must make your own deci­sion as to whether to par­tic­i­pate or not. Mov­ing along…

Ini­tial con­tact: The email I ini­tially received from the Bien­nale Com­mit­tee (flbiennale@artestudio.net) looked like a scam.  As with all email, you should not click on links in the email if you are sus­pi­cious – just type in the real web­site, www.florencebiennale.org, and make con­tact from links there.  Ini­tially they just asked for a snail mail address to ship the Tech­ni­cal Reg­u­la­tions Part I. Also some artists I talked to at the event were ini­tially con­tacted via snail mail not email.

Get orga­nized: In 2009 the Dutch artists orga­nized, set up a email net­work, orga­nized group ship­ping and also pre­pared a lovely glossy book­let of the all the artists in their group for dis­tri­b­u­tion at the Biennale-it was bril­liant.  As for me, I found out there was a US group, but only after I pretty much set-up every­thing for myself.  Rein­vent­ing the wheel takes time. Many hands make light work, there­fore if a group has been orga­nized in your coun­try, make use of it.

Don’t daw­dle: You will find every­thing takes longer than it should, there­fore if you decide to par­tic­i­pate, start fund rais­ing, get your paper­work in, get your pass­port in order, fig­ure out your ship­ping etc. as quickly as pos­si­ble.  Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bien­nale is a finan­cially drain­ing, labor inten­sive, time con­sum­ing process; there is no good rea­son to make it a stress­ful cram-session too.

Awards: I didn’t know that they had them at this event.  They do.  Awards are a cer­tifi­cate and some peo­ple get medals.  If this sort of thing inter­ests you then you will need to put your best foot for­ward.  I did not know about the awards until I was there.  Some judges did look at my work, which made the Ital­ian artist show­ing next to me very excited for me, but I didn’t win any­thing.  I will say that my stretch­ing job on one piece could have been a lit­tle bit bet­ter but I for­got to bring my can­vas pli­ers – did that cost me? I can’t say.  Being in smaller fields such as video, instal­la­tion, or pho­tog­ra­phy may improve your odds of win­ning.  Paint­ing, my cat­e­gory, is by far the largest field, and sculp­ture is not too small either.

Ship­ping:

• If you live in Europe it prob­a­bly is not a prob­lem, just drive in with your art – lots of Euro­pean artists did.
• As for the rest of the world, EPS the ship­per cho­sen by the Bien­nale did a good job from what I could see; they are very con­ve­nient as they not only trans­port and store the art, they hang it & take it down as well, but they are very expen­sive.  The Bien­nale will not help you with alter­na­tives so you will be on your own. I have blogged about the sub­ject of ship­ping exten­sively already, but I will relate how it went for me.
• I paint on stretched can­vas. I took my work off the stretcher bars, rolled it up and took it on the plane with me in a tube; the bars, assem­bly tools and brochures I checked in a gun case that was under the 62-inch length + height + width checked-bag-limit and the bag weight less than 50 pounds, there­fore I did not incur any fees using this method.  I pur­chased a new cabin bag to put cloth­ing etc in as the size of a cabin bag has shrunk since I pur­chased my last one.  Delta counted the tube of paint­ing as my extra item – such as a coat, purse, lap­top that other peo­ple carry, but I did check with the air­line to make sure this would be OK before my flight.  I did not lock the gun case, so cus­toms and the TSA would not have any prob­lems, but I did wrap it with one of those bag­gage straps to make sure it did not pop open dur­ing han­dling.  The gun case did freak out Ital­ian cus­toms briefly, until they real­ized there was no gun in there.  I was not charged a VAT for enter­ing Italy with my art.  In short I paid noth­ing except the cost of my lug­gage (about $140) to get the art into Italy and I can reuse the luggage.
• At least one other artist flew into Italy with an over-sized pack­age con­tain­ing her art, which she could not roll up as she cre­ates using mixed media such as glass.  Ital­ian cus­toms did charge her a 20% VAT based on the value of her art for cus­toms pur­poses. If you fly in – be sure to have self-certification, pho­tos, and pro-forma invoices sim­i­lar to the ones EPS required, show­ing a low value for the art. OR maybe you can con­vince Ital­ian cus­toms offi­cers that the art is for exhi­bi­tion only & not for sale (per l’esibizione solo & non in ven­dita) and has no value for cus­toms purposes-good luck.  I don’t know if this other artist was able to suc­cess­fully reclaim the VAT when she left Italy or not.  Any­way, it seems to be hit or miss as to whether Ital­ian cus­toms takes an inter­est in art trans­ported into their coun­try.  If you are stopped and asked to pay a VAT, be pre­pared part with the funds at least for the dura­tion of the show.  12/28/2009 UPDATE: The artist in ques­tion responded, “They gave me back the money, all of it but not the first day (14th) they had me go back and bring a paper from fedex prov­ing that I’d indeed shipped the art­work back to the US.  So I spent 50 euros in cab fare going back and forth.  So far the art is trapped in Ital­ian customs-FedEx called me today to clear up the prob­lem.  I’m glad you are putting all the details on your blog-all in all the expe­ri­ence was worth it even if expen­sive, I think. ”
• Some artists had their art stuck in cus­toms for using other car­ri­ers.  When I con­tacted sev­eral of these other car­ri­ers, they tended to be very vague about what hap­pened on the Ital­ian end and this result con­firmed my sus­pi­cions.  Some artists from New Zealand got a tem­po­rary impor­ta­tion license that took care of the issue of using alter­nate ship­pers & Ital­ian cus­toms; the Kiwis sug­gested con­tact­ing your country’s embassy in Italy to find out how to get one of these licenses.  I have not actu­ally done this for myself, but I will try to find out what these licenses are called and other infor­ma­tion.  Oth­ers who suc­cess­fully nav­i­gated Ital­ian cus­toms with other ship­pers, rec­om­mended Google-ing ship­pers that ship between your coun­try and Italy and start work­ing with them.
• The Bien­nale will give you a very big, heavy book of all the artists and their bios.  It weighs about 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and is 12 x 10 x 2 inches (31 x 25 x 5 cm) in size, at least those were the dimen­sion of the 2009 book.  If you want to ship it back in your crate when the show is over, plan for it to be there in your crate.
• If you ship to the Bien­nale using an alter­nate car­rier you will need to pack your own tools for open­ing and clos­ing the crate.
• In 2009 the Bien­nale did sup­ply an area to store pack­ag­ing for the dura­tion of the show.
• Real­ize that ship­ping is a two step process; you need to fig­ure out not only how to get your art there, but also how to get it back home.  That is the rea­son for find­ing ship­pers that specif­i­cally work between Italy and your home coun­try, so you can con­tact them at the end of the show to come get your crate to ship it back.

Brochures: A 2007 par­tic­i­pant rec­om­mended bring­ing 1000 brochures.   I don’t know if you need that many.  I needed to make room for the book in my lug­gage so I was push­ing my brochures very hard at the show.  I didn’t bring any other mate­ri­als such as post cards or busi­ness cards and I came home with at least 200 of my brochures.  I think a some brochures – in case a gallery approaches you — plus sev­eral busi­ness cards for peo­ple who do not want a large doc­u­ment to pocket and 1000 attrac­tive post cards would be a bet­ter way to go.  Post cards seem to move bet­ter, per­haps because peo­ple can use them.  You have the pos­si­bil­ity of con­tact from the per­son who picked up the card and the per­son who receives the card in the mail; just be sure to include your con­tact infor­ma­tion (name, phone, snail mail, web­site, email) on the Post Card if you go this route.

The Inter­net: I didn’t know this right away, but the Bien­nale had 2 com­put­ers con­nected to the inter­net, which Bien­nale par­tic­i­pants could use for 10 min­utes at a time for free at the Bien­nale.  I did use an inter­net access point pro­vided by my hotel, which I had to pay for, but I also used this free ser­vice pro­vided by the Bien­nale.  Had I known about it in advance I prob­a­bly would have brought my Face­Book pass­word and my cam­era cable and done live updates from the show.  Face­Book would have allowed me to reach out to many peo­ple at once instead of email­ing spammy newslet­ters.  Remem­ber that whether you log-in at an inter­net access at an inter­net café, the Bien­nale or at your hotel, you prob­a­bly should mark all log ins as “pub­lic ter­mi­nal” so your user name and pass­word are not stored.

The Gala Din­ner: I enjoyed it.  The food was an accept­able 5 course meal, with bot­tom­less red wine and/or water; they served espresso and aper­i­tifs at the end.   I didn’t arrive early, but at least I was solo so I quickly found a table where I knew at least a few peo­ple. If you have a larger group that wants to sit together you do need to get there early to claim a table.  Many peo­ple dress for the event, but pho­tos were made at the table so good hair, make-up and a nice top are all that is really required; I wore a blingy top, jeans and ten­nis shoes and it was fine.  They had opera singers for the entire meal, which made me feel like I was in The God­fa­ther movie.   In gen­eral a good time was had by all, but at the end of the show, the Fortezza secu­rity none too gen­tly kicked us out of the hall. We all piled in cabs and went to a dance club – some of that crew wan­dered into their hotels at 8 AM the next morn­ing – as for me I think I was in by 3 AM.  As for din­ner, order the extra tick­ets you might need in advance with the sec­ond batch of Bien­nale paper­work, then pick them up timely at the show-those that didn’t pick up their tick­ets timely may have found them resold by the Bien­nale for peo­ple who failed to order extras in advance (these were made avail­able first come first served).

Hang­ing and tear­ing down, etc:

• I came pre­pared with my own tools so I didn’t have a prob­lem.  If you rely on the kind­ness of strangers it might work out, but it will take a lot longer to get ready for the show & I wouldn’t want to be expect­ing help when it comes to tear down.
• If you need to use a lad­der or some­thing like that you will expe­ri­ence delays wait­ing for one to come available.
• The Bien­nale did deliver large crates to the space where the art was to be dis­played, but I heard reports that get­ting them removed to stor­age was a bit more dif­fi­cult.  The Bien­nale folks did get the big crates moved even­tu­ally.  Pre­sum­ably there would be issues get­ting them back out of stor­age as well.
• The sculp­ture stands – It is for­bid­den to order one for brochures – don’t know why.  In any case they seemed to be made of par­ti­cle board that was painted white and they cost extra, 50 Euro each. If you have very heavy sculp­ture you may want to bring your own stands-but that does imply ship­ping them with the atten­dant hassle.
• You also may want to securely mount frag­ile sculp­ture; one award-winning Venet­ian glass piece was destroyed when a cam­era­man backed into it on the sec­ond to last day of the show, knock­ing it from its stand shat­ter­ing it into many pieces. I don’t know how that worked out-did insur­ance pay for the work, or the cam­era­man, or did the artist bear the loss?
• Some artists car­ried their un-stretched can­vas into Italy and hired a local com­pany to stretch them for 100 euro.  One artist rented manikins locally.  It would stand to rea­son that other things could be rented or pur­chased locally as well such as stands, tools or a lad­der.  I rec­om­mend you do your research before you get to Flo­rence, rather than after though.
• The signs that the Bien­nale sup­plied for the indi­vid­ual works were printed in tiny type.  The signs were all printed on self adher­ing paper so it seems to me that if you wanted larger sig­nage you could prob­a­bly make it on your own com­puter at home and bring it with you.  Ditto any addi­tional infor­ma­tion you would like to post at your space such as an artist state­ment, bio, etc.

Bien­nale Rules: For the record I fol­lowed the rules, I brought 3 24 x 36-inch simply-hung works that were back sta­pled – each piece weighed about a kg.  That said…

• In 2009 as a painter (which for these pur­poses includes any flat-ish wall-hung art) I was told I had a space of 3 x 2.5 meters (about 10 x 8 ft). For the most part wall space was exactly that, but some walls had pro­trud­ing par­ti­tions that some artists used to expand their domain.  One artist brought a lot of large work and they moved her to an exte­rior wall that was much larger — I have no idea how she got this vari­ance from the Bien­nale.  At least one artist had very long paper pieces — she was in an area with much taller walls — I don’t know if she made a spe­cial request in advance or not.  Any­way if you have odd-sized work that doesn’t con­form to the space allot­ted I think you  would want to dis­cuss that with the Bien­nale com­mit­tee before decid­ing to show.
• Sculp­tors (which includes instal­la­tions) got a floor space of 6 square meters (or about 8 x 8 ft); the floor space was a bit more flex­i­ble from what I saw.  If you were located in a wide open area you could spread out a bit, oth­er­wise… but there is no way to know how far out you could spread in advance of the show.  You don’t know where you are located until you get there. Again if your work doesn’t fit, I think you  would want to dis­cuss that with the Bien­nale com­mit­tee before decid­ing to show.
• Wall art could weight 40 kg max (88 pounds); work was hung by cords sus­pended from hooks at the top of the wall – the weight lim­i­ta­tion prob­a­bly makes sense.  I only recall one piece that vio­lated that rule, and they brought their own wall.
• Pho­tog­ra­phers were allows 6 works all oth­ers only 3.   Yeah right.  I saw sev­eral painters with 6 works or more; sure some could be clas­si­fied as dip­tychs or trip­tychs, or mul­ti­ple pieces of some larger whole, but there were many who obvi­ously just brought more than three.  The same holds true of sculp­ture as at least one I can think of had 5 stands with 4 or 5 pieces each. Of course if you get clas­si­fied as an instal­la­tion then all your related sculp­tural work counted as one.
• There had to be 10 cm between works paint­ings.  Again, if the artist brought a lot of work there often was no sep­a­ra­tion between the pieces.
• Sculp­ture could weight 80 kg (176 kg max).  I don’t know if this rule was vio­lated, but there were sev­eral stone sculp­tures with metal stands, and sev­eral life size fig­ures that may have.
• Sculp­ture could only be 2.5 m high max (8 ft).  I don’t know if any sculp­ture in the exhibit hall vio­lated this rule.
• Although part II tech­ni­cal reg­u­la­tions sug­gested the work had to be ready to hang and back-stapled, some artists hung “tapes­try style” (un-stretched), and some artists hung unframed side-stapled pieces.
• The Bien­nale states that the art has to remain in place for the entirety of the exhi­bi­tion — it makes sense — they are sell­ing tick­ets to their show.  How­ever some pieces did “walk out” even before the final day. By the time 7 PM rolled around on Decem­ber 13, 2009 (the exhi­bi­tion was open until 8 PM) sev­eral artists were tear­ing down and leav­ing with their work even as the Bien­nale inter­com blared such activ­ity was pro­hib­ited. I left my work in place and It took it apart and pack­aged it for the trip home about 9:30 AM on Decem­ber 14, 2009.  By then I would have to say most of the art was already gone or being pack­aged to ship.

Bot­tom line – in 2009 the Bien­nale “rules” were flex­i­ble.  If you decide to push the enve­lope you do so at your own risk in future shows.

That is all I can think of for now.

I will be post­ing pic­tures and a sort of diary on my web­site about my Bien­nale expe­ri­ence. I am cur­rently slog­ging through my images, edit­ing them and putting on cap­tions.  There is a gen­eral travel update post I made before this one, plus sev­eral older posts about find­ing a hotel, ship­ping con­tainer, air­lines etc.  I hope you find this infor­ma­tion useful.

Do you have any obser­va­tions or tips to con­vey to future Flo­rence Bien­nale par­tic­i­pants? Please respond and help inform future Bien­nale par­tic­i­pants about what to expect.

Yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the $7651.31 I charged to attend this event; this amount is the sum all the receipts I can find relat­ing to the trip-about $4,000 is the Bien­nale artist’s share, then hotel & air­fare, plus pack­ag­ing for my art, taxis, meals in Italy, postage and other inci­den­tal expenses. I have raised about $2079 in dona­tions–many thanks to those who have con­tributed to this event.  But I need more assis­tance and every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.