Beware explanation proliferation. It makes me nervous when a work of art is “about” too much. The theme at this year’s Venice Biennale is “Foreigners Everywhere” and John Akomfrah’s commission for the British Pavilion is, we are promised in the exhibition pamphlet, “aesthetically and contextually rich”. I would say it is aesthetically samey and contextually incontinent.
It is about cultural memory and planetary reflection, historical milestones and listening as activism — it is also about post-colonialism, ecology and “the sonic”. The title is drawn from a poem by the 11th-century Chinese writer and artist Su Dongpo and is organised into cantos inspired by Ezra Pound. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard gets a nod. The ethnomusicologist Steven Feld is also in the mix along with the
