Fairs & Events
The Wrong Biennale: Editor’s Picks
By Shira Wolfe
“This is a collaborative journey, so be kind, patient, and respect everyone’s work. Let’s have a good time together.”
The Wrong Biennale
In anticipation of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale, we take a look at another art biennial that enriches the 2024 art world calendar, offering an accessible alternative to the fair system as we’ve come to know it: The Wrong Biennale. As the world’s largest online art biennial, The Wrong Biennale brings together artists, curators and institutions every two years to explore creativity and digital culture in an accessible, surprising manner. It’s an excellent snapshot of the vast range of possibilities the internet itself offers, featuring established, emerging and underrepresented artists all included on one platform, showcased in many different pavilions.
The Wrong Biennale was founded in 2013 by David Quiles Guilló and is organized by The Wrong Studio. Since its inception, its mission has been to foster a more inclusive and diverse (digital) art scene, which encourages experimentation and artistic growth. And with a viewership of millions of people all over the world, there is no doubt that The Wrong Biennale is achieving its goals.
“It seems that there are not enough places to fail or to try uncertain things in this society, even though almost no one can make things perfect from the beginning. All the rough ideas that have gone unrealized or been given up due to the lack of opportunities could potentially become something.”
Mariko Hori, curator of Soro-sorO pavilion
Selection of Pavilions at The Wrong Biennale
We explore a selection of exciting pavilions participating in the 2023/24 edition, which has been running from November 1, 2023, and has been extended through March 31, 2024. For those who want to see more but are overwhelmed with the number of pavilions on offer, take a look at The Wrong TV, a live-streaming video platform, managed as a flexible and open virtual art salon, curated by David Quiles Guilló. In the words of The Wrong Biennale: “This is a collaborative journey, so be kind, patient, and respect everyone’s work. Let’s have a good time together.”
So Far, So Near
An online art biennial would not be complete without the expected myriad of AI art contributions. So Far, So Near is one of the more versatile and original AI pavilions, featuring not only a well-curated selection of AI photography and visual art but also interesting explorations of the use of AI to generate music, sound art and video art. The pavilion poses the question: “Is it possible to produce critical reflections using the processes and languages that the system under investigation provides?”
Cosmos, or A Chronicle of Life’s Incredible Order, Complexity, and Remarkable Struggle Against Entropy and Resistance of Decay.
This pavilion explores two metaphysical questions: What is there? And what is it like? The result is a five-hour-long abstract moving landscape, which the artist created frame-by-frame, depicting “Life, the Universe and Everything.” “The aim,” as explained in the curatorial statement, “was to be as scientifically accurate as possible yet visually compelling in the interest of underscoring the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things.” The result is a moving piece of art compiling anything and everything that makes up life and the universe, reminiscent of Ron Fricke’s movies Samsara and Baraka, and Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.
Soro-sorO
Soro-sorO is a place for indefinite ideas—a recurring art event launched by Amsterdam-based Japanese artist Mariko Hori in 2022. Soro soro is a Japanese word expressing the idea that it’s about time to do something. The concept therefore places the focus on allowing artists the space for experimentation and creative exchange, trying out their “indefinite ideas” in front of an audience. The third edition of Soro-sorO takes place as one of the pavilions of The Wrong Biennale, focused around sound art, video art and poetry.
For Hori, Soro-sorO was born from a feeling of missing small venues for artistic experimentation in Amsterdam: “It seems that there are not enough places to fail or to try uncertain things in this society, even though almost no one can make things perfect from the beginning. All the rough ideas that have gone unrealized or been given up due to the lack of opportunities could potentially become something. The great thing about Tokyo was that there were many venues where artists and musicians could experiment in front of an audience. My favorite was ‘l-e’ in Osaki, founded by Takuya and Yukiko Sakamoto. When I moved to Amsterdam, Covid-19 hit, and I couldn’t find nice small venues—places like those in Tokyo don’t seem to exist in Amsterdam, so I thought I should create one myself. Since I don’t own a physical place, Soro-sorO is just happening as an event for now, but I will always be happy to hear if any venue is interested in collaborations.”
Lullaby Tapes
Lullaby Tapes offers a moment of respite amid the wild and wide-ranging artistic selection on offer at The Wrong Biennale. Beautiful in its simplicity, it returns us to the ritual of the lullaby—collecting a library of original lullabies from various regions and languages around the world, with a focus on India.
Curated by Madhu Sharma
VerbivocoVirtual
VerbivocoVirtual is the amalgamation of verbal+vocal+visual, rooted in the legacy of Concrete Poetry, in particular the poetry pioneered by Brazilian poets Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari, and Augusto de Campos. The idea behind this pavilion is to build on their legacy and invite artists to explore creative inquiries into language while propelling these into the virtual realm. As explained by the curatorial team: “Poetry is the art of the word, but it can also be the art of human restlessness before the limits of language. So, it is expected that poets seek to extrapolate the conventional domains of verbal dynamics. One of the ways to do this is to approach other languages, such as graphic arts, performance, photography, video to reach new frontiers, mixing grammars.” With more than 50 artists participating, feast your eyes and ears on a wide variety of video-poetry.
Curated by Fabio Fon, Rodolfo Mata, and Soraya Braz
Throwing Digital Bricks: Queer Acts of Protest
The curatorial statement of Throwing Digital Bricks: Queer Acts of Protest refers to the Stonewall Riots on June 28, 1969: “In 1969, a single brick in a New York street became a symbol, shattering the silence suffocating the Queer community. […] 54 years have passed since this first brick was thrown and our resistance continues, everywhere.” This pavilion offers a vast collection of queer art, which can be discovered through a personal journey navigating the “digital bricks” in a specially built digital space.
Curated by The Selfie Institute
Família Vende Tudo
The pavilion Família Vende Tudo redirects visitors to a Bandcamp page, where you can listen to Objeto Amarelo’s album Família Vende Tudo, “the most recent work of a unique fast ambient music project in the world that abstracts a song and produces figurative noise for you to dance, think and dance better since 1999.” It may be kind of the odd one out, but that’s the beauty of The Wrong Biennale—you can truly find all sorts of things there, even an excellent ambient “figurative noise” album that conjures up a flurry of thoughts and images, without experiencing a literal overload of images. Because for all the freshness in The Wrong’s democratic, horizontal nature, it can be overwhelming to say the least, and a contemplative break is definitely needed from time to time.
Relevant sources to learn more
More articles from Artland Magazine you may like:
The Year Ahead: the Art World in 2024, Major Fairs, Trends & Exhibitions
From Antiquity to Modernity, How Art Fairs Became A Cultural Mainstay
The 2022 Venice Biennale at a Glance: Highlights & Awards
Artist Interview with Jeffrey Gibson, representing the USA at the 2024 Venice Biennale
Other relevant sources:
The Wrong Biennale
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