Artists signal a globally accumulating energy

I first watched them on May 11 as they were performing their art at the entrance to the Arsenale where a number of works are being exhibited or performed at the 57th International Exhibition in Venice, or the Venice Biennale.

It is an "arts collective" as they call themselves; a production by the Museum on Tour Austria and the XXXism project. Ten young people - you cannot tell their gender because of the police-like uniforms they wear - simply block the road and imitate the police measures that have become familiar in our lives, not just because of terrorism but many other reasons as well.

They try to give a message of peace by agitating the peaceful atmosphere of an international arts event which also attracts art collectors and world millionaires. But when you start watching their police-like stance, other members of the team approach you with infra-red night-vision googles. When you look through them, you can read peace slogans written on their chests; a smart combination of arts with high-tech material and equipment which you can observe in very innovative ways in many examples at the biennale.

The second time I saw them was in the Giardini, the famous Napoleon-built gardens of Venice which will host the majority of the country pavilions at the exhibition for the next six months. Görgün Taner, the head of the Istanbul Arts and Culture Foundation (İKSV), with whom we went to appreciate the exhibition, said there was something wrong while I was trying to communicate with Istanbul for the next day's issue of the Hürriyet Daily News. 

As they were lined up to cut one of the lanes in the Giardini, about 50 meters away from us, real life anti-terror policemen approached them. It happened so quickly that neither Görgün, nor myself...