Riz Ali at The Venice Biennale 2024

In April 2024 Riz Ali was supported by the British Council and Touchstones, Rochdale to embark on a month-long research trip to The Venice Biennale 2024. Riz kindly agreed to write this article for Rochdale Creates, which documents his experience and take-homes from this special journey:

My research was set out to develop my community based practice at Touchstones, I had given myself three big questions to tackle:

• How does Touchstones tackle racial injustice to better represent the diasporic history of Rochdale and serve the community not on racial bias but on the need of the community?
•  How do we take accountability, rather than apologise for, post-colonial legacies and how do we best represent pre-colonialisation within Touchstones? 
• And can how we do this successfully as we create and explore *fluid and temporal displays* within a newly redeveloped multi-medium institute? *Film, live performance, more environmentally sustainable digital ways of displaying art culture and history.

The questions I had set out to explore were quite complex and large. There was no set time limit; I didn’t need to be finished by the end of the trip. I do believe this is only the start of my research. During my time in Venice, I had been able to keep a physical visual art book of a collection of my thoughts, feelings, ideas and where I had been. The book itself transcends static artwork through the use of multimedia, as I explored how to digitally incorporate elements and explore the lines between autobiographical memoir and creative storytelling. All comments and wording are my own and do not represent any partner institute that I may represent. 

I had a month to live on, work in, and explore Venice. I resided on a small island called Lido, a more residential island which I grew very fond of. I would take the vaporetto (boat bus) to the mainland every day. When I wasn’t looking at the other art works, I was situated in the British Pavilion, watching over John Akomfrah’s work, Listening All Night To The Rain. The first week was filled with people carrying small dogs in bags, Burberry-Bag shenanigans, lots of champagne and a lot more rain. It was a whole world away from what I knew - apart from the rain. My role was to welcome visitors, direct them around the gallery space, inspect the building and the artwork, and, of course, answer any questions visitors had. We were prepared before our first day with information about the exhibition, about the artist and even had the privilege of meeting him, sitting on the steps of the famous pavilion as he told us first hand about his work. I worked for seven days straight that first week and had to adapt to my new life very quickly. 

It wasn’t until the second week that I felt like I had properly settled in, and had the chance to get on with my research. I found myself exploring the Biennale after my morning shifts or even on my days off. I’d take a packed lunch, take my time and let myself get lost in the gardens filled with art. It was a surreal experience, having access to vast amounts of art all in one location. Each day, more of the work around me influenced where I’d get the answers to my questions. I began to think I perhaps needed to relook at the questions I was asking, to simplify them. 

How does Touchstones best represent and serve the diasporic history of its own community whilst also taking accountability for previous colonialistic behaviour and tackle art to become a more accessible space for all of its community? And how do we do this successfully as we create and explore *fluid and temporal displays* within a newly redeveloped multi-medium institute? 

My job at Touchstones is to work on producing community led programmes and activities. I like to think I have a good understanding of what the various groups and communities I work with need. A lot of my job involves talking to people, and that’s where I felt most at home while I was in Venice, invigilating the exit to the pavilion and Canto 3. A lot of people stopped to reminisce over a time period they remembered, this response ignited by seeing the objects suspended above them. This prompted me to consider the questions I had laid out previously as well as my work. The art installation represented the community and how we communicate through different elements. The installation, which was an audio piece, really represented how we can successfully explore and use multimedia to connect with audiences, showing how one object alone with one memory or connection can tell a thousand intimate words for the audience. 

I, of course, became very homesick and found that the similarities between Venice and Rochdale were few and far between. I felt like a small fish in a huge ocean. Apart from the winding canals, I felt a little lost. But, like Rochdale, there were pockets of community and I happened to find them. There was a bar, tucked down an alleyway and along a part of a canal no one really frequented, near a building that must have been abandoned. All the creatives went there, after a shift or just in the evening. The drinks were cheap and there were no seats, apart from the wall which became a good seat itself. In a way, it reminded me of The Baum, a historical place for creatives to come together to talk, share stories and consider where they belong in the world. I met with artists who lived up the road from myself but it happened to be along this ginnel, beside a canal in Venice that we met and exchanged stories.

The strange thing now is that I occasionally find myself homesick for Venice. I found a community there that wasn’t all that dissimilar from the community I had in Rochdale, and I realised that so many of the answers to my questions rest in engaging those groups. Bringing together creatives from all walks of life is what the Biennale is about, at its heart, and it’s what Rochdale can be too.