The Milk of Dreams: Exploring the video art of La Biennale Arte 2022

Il Latte dei Sogni. The Milk of Dreams. This is the title of this year’s Biennale Art, the bi-annual art exhibit that turns the lagoon of Venice into a meeting point for contemporary artists from all over the world. The name of this edition comes from a book of fables by surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, a call to never stop dreaming, always changing and reinventing oneself.

The past few years have signaled much change in the world. The three main thematic areas of The Milk of Dreams try to explore them: the relationship between bodies and their metamorphoses; the connection between individuals and technologies; the link that intersects bodies with the Earth. At a time when man-made global warming is burning the world up, many countries are on the brink of a new World War, and social media helps people lose touch with reality, the amount of artistic innovation and provocation presented in the various pavilions in the Giardini Biennale and Arsenale is staggering, profound, and deeply relevant.

Among the various paintings, sculptures, live performances, and immersive installations, there are plenty of showcases of video art. The freedom digital filmmaking has given to artists is unparalleled, every one of them making the most of this year’s themes to say something about the state of the world and further develop their obsessions and poetics.

Do not be fooled by the term “video art”, for there are quite a few installations that are proper short films through and through. Marianna Simnett’s The Severed Tail is a perfect example of this. Outside of the screening room, one can spot a thick, furry tail coming out of it that develops inside into a big, soft, interweaving sofa on which guests can lounge to enjoy the three interconnected screens. The film is part documentary and part fiction, a critique of the painful practice of cutting tails from young animals. Scenes of a tailless piglet running around a farm are intercut with surreal, grotesque sequences of actors in costumes, dancing and singing in dimly-lit sets, with Cronenbergian moments of body horror that blur the line between fantasy and reality, animal, and human.

For something even more unsettling, there is The Parents’ Room by the Italian Diego Marcon. This loop starts and ends with a digital blackbird landing on a windowsill. Inside the room, a man sits beside a woman on a bed, and he starts to sing. Soon, two children enter the room as well, and all four characters join a chorus. What looks like a simple domestic scene at first ends up being far darker, as the man sings of how he murdered his whole family, moved by rapturous violence, before ending his own life. Grim and depressing, there is a startling uncanny valley effect as all four actors wear heavy prosthetics that resemble paper-mâché masks (think of the make-up in the bittersweet “Prank Show” sketch from the second season of I Think You Should Leave). A deeply moving video, equal parts touching and unnerving.

Of course, this would not be a contemporary art exhibit without bizarre and unique uses of old and new technologies. Luiz Roque, stuck inside his home during the São Paulo lockdown, used his 8mm camera to capture the flight of the titular Urubu, a city bird that moves and glides through the skyscrapers of the city, a symbol of freedom so close, yet so far. On the other hand, Chinese new media artist LuYang created a series of computer-animated videos by the name of DOKU - Digital Descending: a proper journey from heaven to hell and everything in between, music videos that blend religious imagery with hip hop and otaku tendencies, crafting an assault of the senses that is an intoxicating experience with its use of sacred and profane imagery in today’s digital culture.

On a more sombre side of things, there are works that enlighten viewers about the daily life, myths, and customs of lesser-known cultures and places. Vietnamese painter-turned-filmmaker Thao Nguyen Phan’s three-screen video focuses on the life of a Khmer “brise soleil” artisan, to then transition into the retelling of an XVIII century love story between a Vietnamese healer and a Khmer woman. First Rain, Brise Soleil ends up highlighting a piece of Southeast Asian history that is never studied in European classrooms. There is also Mary of Ill Fame, a piece of historical fiction where filmmaker Tourmaline reimagines a more idyllic life for black trans sex worker Mary Jones (masterfully portrayed by Rowin Amone), while Zheng Bo’s Le Sacre du printemps is a queer eco-sexual film, where men literally copulate with nature. Meanwhile, Chillahona by Uzbek Saodat Ismailova describes the practice of self-isolation and meditation in underground tombs.

Last but not least, there are hybrid video installations, meant more to give brief respite to the guests of the festival as they move from room to room rather than delivering fully exhaustive films. The aforementioned Urubu is found on a medium-sized screen above a gate, with visitors looking at it with their noses up, lost in its hypnotic loop. Also deeply alluring and mesmerizing is Songs from the Compost: mutating bodies, imploding stars by the Lithuanian Eglė Budvytytė, a mixture of music video and performance art, with droning sounds and repetitive narration that reminds the importance of living and non-living organisms working in unison. PLAY is three 16mm videos of huskies projected on the side of doghouses, a very quiet project that harkens back to the artist Liv Bugge’s family history with sled dogs growing up in Norway. 

Visiting this year’s Biennale Arte is truly a must for anyone visiting Venice. It is a stark reminder that art is still alive, thriving, and as rich and provocative as ever! But most importantly, even those that prefer videos and films can take quite a lot out of the whole experience, learning of new cultures, habits, and realities, as well as thinking about their own lives and where humanity is headed in the future. Plus, for those that do not have the time to explore the main exhibits, there are multiple free pavilions hidden around the city, such as the Portuguese one inside Palazzo Franchetti, that screens Vampires in Space by non-binary artist Pedro Neves Marques. A great example of democratizing art.