Group of artists from Crimea set out for Venice on a raft made of their own artistic works. Things didn’t go exactly swimmingly, however. The “art gondola” was supposed to leave the village of Dobroi in the Simferopol region through the Black and Mediterranean seas to the 57th Venice Biennale on July 9, 2017. Having planned to broadcast the journey live on Periscope, their transmission ended as the vessel met its watery end.
On the request of the artists, Yuga.ru did not release the name of the (presumably embarrassed) group involved, but published information from their press release. The intrepid creatives were allegedly attempting to follow in the footsteps of Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who was lost at sea in 1975 while attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the USA to England as part of an artwork titled In Search of the Miraculous.
“In our journey, we must complete the work of Ader and thereby free the art that lies in the ocean of darkness among […] curator-spies, blinded by the pressure of capital,” wrote the group. “We will raise the banner ‘Viva arte viva’ (these words are deceitful in Venice, but are alive on our raft),” they stated, referring to the title of this year’s Venice Biennale, seemingly in protest against the event.