Hi Tech Gondola. The Venice Biennale in an Advertisement
Clarissa Ricci
On the occasion of the 45th Venice Biennale (1993), the artistic director, Achille Bonito Oliva, commissioned a television commercial with the aim of improving the institution’s image in a period of low international recognition. The result consists of twenty-one short videos created by Nam June Paik, Paul Garrin and Marco Giusti. The Biennale is recalled through the use of visual fragments of tourist sites in Venice, combined with performance elements and popular images. This paper analyses the attempt to portray the Venice Biennale in an advertisement and repositions the commercials in Paik’s body of work. In addition, the aim of the text is to understand Paik’s self-appropriation mechanism, which resembles the functioning of memory.