Venice Halucinations

The arsenale nuovo exhibition opened, I did not really know what the Venice bienniale actually meant yet. The champagne was drunk. Loyal Marina had flown in from London to support me as was her habit for every exhibition I had abroad since meeting in Paris, and caught the eye of a handsome Mexican who came to the opening and unfortunately got lost right after it.

Rest of the evening we swung about Venice,rode the vaporetti from diner to party, as clock struck Cinderella's hour or as my grandpa would say a time for all fine ladies to be at home, we headed out to a peer where midnight a boat was picking up art babies and transporting them over the dark Adriatic and into summer land.

It sailed to one of the furthest little islands from Venice. The phantom captain did not speak a word he just stoped the boat and the art monkeys who had been drinking stolen champagne spilled out like zommbie ants and went in search of their queen.

The island was savage and black. Nothing other than thorn bushes and tree silluetes where visible, apart from a trail of red floor candles which set us on a mile long trail trough the brush in high-heels, to the accompaniment of a hyterical cricket orchestra. There was no clue as to what lies at the end of the path so we kept on walking to the islands end. Under an arch of brick a dazzeling opera singer sang and played the grand piano. Behind the arch was the blackc sea. We danced to a operatic song than set about sniffing around, to find what ever was happening.

Eventualy we stumbeled upon a garden of castle in ruins, which where lit up , and in the midst of the court a giant chess borad represented the dance floor. DJ played music and elegant zombies floated in the ruins climbing walls and staircases leading to no where, of what looked like the Labyrinth movie set. Only the tower of the castle had remained intact and it seemed the ants had found their queen in it, for they where milling to the top of it, where I on climbing too, found a free cocktail bar which explained its own popularity. The dance floor quckley filled with newcomer boaters , music threw everyone into a trance. Dance dance dance, the bienales are about the parties and danceing. And so we danced and danced for hours beneath the stars, with dousens of partenrs, spinning and catching polystyrene bobbles thrown about. Marina re discovered her handsome Mexican boy and disappeared to her own romance.

At some point the exhaustion of preparing a show and partying wooed me of the chess board and into the garden where I came upon a great mound of polystyrene-bobbles and people sitting within laughing, and as it seemed a perfectley good spot for a time out, I joined them in the polystyrene, and soon its warmth lullabied me into sleep.

Awoken by Gabriele's laughing and calling, the eyes reluctentley opened to find my self amidst a group of naked boys. They where prancing about some sort of tribal dance in the polystyrene , willies a jangling freeley, and I in a bright pink dress had sleapt in the middle of their stage.

The whole thing was surreal. Women passed by wearing pink and blue wigs . Dazed and sleepy, I wanted Marina to take me home, but despite not admitting it yet, she had fallen in love that evening, and was not going to leave the island until she got her first kiss. As dawn spilled out Marina became bored of waiting and diplomatically informed and insisted to the Mexican that she really absolutely no way ,did not want him to kiss her, and of course by reverse psychology forced him to do it.

For her this was the beginig of a great love story, for me it was a great proscastionation before I got to long the awaited soft bed,and saved the whole incident into the fragmented dream memory. There it all remained, until back home in Rome an art jurnalist came out of his way to graciousley inform me that there are " Photographs of you in a magasine during the orgy with Gelitin in Venice"." It was not me" argument was imideatel beaten with his detailed description of the pink dress.

(Gelitin- a group of Austrian artists)