Last summer, the critics were adamant: the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was a disappointment, a failure. With Opera Aperta/Loose Work, curator Guus Beumer and his collective of artists allegedly fabricated an incomprehensible intellectual puzzle that even the most dedicated art aficionados could not get a grip on it. The idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, in which artists enter one another's domains and all the parts together lead to a total experience, also went utterly unappreciated. Art lovers complained that the individual artists were unable to come into their own, and that this was primarily the fault of the overall design of the huge stage, which commanded almost all of the attention.
Whether or not the experiment by Guus Beumer and consorts was a success, the criticism is in any case characteristic of the conservative attitude of the art world in regards to different forms of presentation. The artist is and remains sacred, and his or her work can best be seen in a neutral white space.
Read further in Metropolis M No 6 2011-2012
