As the 53rd Venice Biennale enters its last days and the world’s art community reflects, Anonymous Gallery and curator Spy Emerson provide a glimpse of what critic Jerry Saltz called “…The most moving moment I had at the Biennale…”

Pankabestia: Punk Beasts of the Swimming Cities of Serenissima, is a retrospective of artist Swoon’s “Swimming Cities of Serenissima”, the recent unauthorized invasion of the Venice Biennale. Traveling from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy, Swoon and more than 30 other artists braved the waters of the Adriatic Sea and navigated a fleet of three intricately hand crafted vessels. The exhibition, curated by Spy Emerson, opens on November 20, 2009 and will include large-scale wall drawings, original Swimming Cities boat installations, portions of the ships, found objects acquired from sea, performances from artists such as Moses and Spy, Tianna Kennedy and Adina Bier, beautiful photographic documentation from artist Tod Seelie, as well as artwork from Swoon, Spy Emerson, Monica Canilao and many others.

Curator Spy Emerson’s thoughts on the experience: “Pankabestia”- what the Italian villagers called us when we floated into town on our junk rafts. It translates to “punk beasts”, and by all accounts we were - magical, grubby, unruly creatures carrying out an enchanted mythical scene, looking like bits of broken dreams, drifting. The townspeople were apprehensive along the rural canals to Venice. They locked their doors and windows when we stopped in town, and they watched. The beauty of the rafts was captivating, the poetic pilings and forced perspectives, stairs spiraling upward, and tiny pagodas with corrugated reflections. The brave came to look… then the curious, and before long all people were welcoming us with gifts and food. In a remote fishing village, a woman told me in broken English, we kissed a breath of life into her old home, and we will not soon be forgotten.

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima was Living Art, designed by SWOON, and executed by 30 individual artists known for their abilities to make unreal things happen. Constructed was a reality without right angles, standard rules did not apply there. Alice, Maria, and Old Hickory were the protagonists of our story, and our traveling homes. Living on the rafts, the crew became a visual part of the large moving sculptures, and participants in the mad drama flourishing in turbulence, primal urges, euphoria and fear.

In retrospect, I see that we were punk beasts. We raided dumpsters, slept on the ground, shat in the woods, and laughed in the rain. We let loose our social restraints to be free to create and experience something profound, to drag our fingertips along the underside of bridges, and jump the fences of the Venice Biennale.”
- Spy Emerson, curator

“…The most moving moment I had at the Biennale, however, came in the last minutes of my last day at the show. Just before closing time, as guards herded stragglers toward the entrance from the far end of the Arsenal where I was, three marvelous-looking vessels cobbled together from urban detritus motored past Mike Boucher’s wonderful sunken suburban house, and into the small lagoon. A band played a haunting song, a woman sang, a girl swung on a swing. The boats are the work of the artist Swoon. I’m told that Swoon wasn’t even invited to the show. She and her gypsy friends simply entered of their own accord and did what they wanted to do. Like the best work here, Swoon’s work doesn’t come out of academic critique; it comes from necessity and vision. These are the perfect tools for making things as old as time new again — including an art world turned dangerously into itself.”

Jerry Saltz – New York Magazine

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:  

Swoon .