While We Lay Awake

Things discussed: Reboots; Art Biennale; Expo 2015; Enthusiasm; Vast Oceans Unspoken.

Special/Expo 2015; Special/Biennale 2015; 
written by e&f

It's been a very long hiatus. But how long can a hiatus be before ushering a reboot?


This is not, strictly, our plan. We like the way we set up the blog the first time around. But we did think some issues through.

On the whole, then, we'll be doing what we did, albeit at a slower pace, more meditative, and diving a little deeper. But we will also try to cover more up-to-date issues in what seems to be a pretty exciting year of art events.

Our reviews have rarely been timely. We do go to openings but seldom write about them. What we have just seen and experienced needs time to grow on us and find the right arrangement of words on the page. Sometimes this may take weeks. Or months.

This means that often, perhaps too often, we've reviewed exhibitions that were closed or closing. And this isn't a good service to anybody.

There is a tail of posts with this same issue coming soon, but we hope to be interrupting this trend in the next few months.

Luckily for us, this year Italy in particular has two huge events going on at the same time, and both lasting several months: the Art Biennale in Venice and the Expo 2015 in Milan. And in a sense there's a bit of both in each.

Our coverage of these events, given their size and complexity, will be a loose collection of posts with a header link on top, and will be nested under two new labels: Special/Expo and Special/Biennale.

We will be far from covering them all. Not because of size, but because of taste. In this case, too, we will be doing what we've always done: only talk about what we like, leaving unspoken the vast ocean of what we don't.

We'd rather write enthusiastically and critically about something we enjoyed and understood, than deal with something that felt unispiring, useless or irritating to us.

This doesn't mean we can't be critical sometimes. But we will always try to be constructive, talking about marginal aspects of something we enjoyed on the whole.

As for our think pieces, while the blog lay dormant we were fully awake: we have been writing, watching, taking pictures, reading, visiting places and talking to people.

We have enough material already stored away for several months to come. And some surprises, too.

We do hope you'll enjoy the new ride.