Paolo Baratta is the President of the Biennale since 2008, with a former short term between 1998 and 2000.
In 2011 his presidency was put into question and for a few months, it looked like it was about to end.
For some strange, inexplicable reasons, ‘reason’ prevailed, and Baratta was confirmed in his post.
In a country like Italy, where reason have, usually, no place, this looked like no minor affair.
The 2013 Art and the 2014 architecture editions together appear now to justify the above statements.
President Baratta emerges as the only person in today’s Italy, able to win the formidable inertia of the various layers of beaurocracy and defensive mindframe―aptly characterized by Rem as the narcissism of failure―of public unmovable ‘machine’ like the biennale and set it to work.
Baratta aims, in fact, to turn the biennale into a machine for desires!
Is one allowed to applaud this surprising ambition?
I like to think that i am.