The final breakfast briefing session at Movie Bistro in Venice saw extensive discussion on what the future role of the journalist might look like.

Martin Holman (writer on art), Ami Clarke (Banner Repeater), Anna Battista (journalist), Jane Lawson (artist), Shonagh Manson (Director of Jerwood Charitable Foundation), Robert Frankle (artist) and Gaynor O’Flynn (Artists for Nepal) presented the following set of briefs:

Martin Holman

We can’t talk anymore. Words spilt or spoken are the alta acqua of the Venice Biennale.

The great Biennale disconnect. Which reality does it serve?

In Venice thousands dine. In the sea off Libya hundreds die.

Don’t look now. For artists’ integrity, Venice is the knife-wielding dwarf in the red hooded coat.

At the Biennale, why does Tintoretto always win?

Anna Battista

The Biennale theme is All The World’s Futures – what is the future of journalism? Will the journalist morph/mutate into a curator, a PR officer, or a merchant or is the journalist destined to wear the venetian “Bauta” and disappear like a ghost? @irenebrination

Many fashion companies are investing into art/ art spaces / museums, or restoration projects. – Is this genuine patronage or just another way to strengthen a brand’s identity and presence on the market? @irenebrination

Shonagh Manson

It’s easy to despise the super yachts lining the grand canal as objects and symbols of privilege and inequality, but what more can the stories of the people who live and work on them tell us about the circulation of power? @shonaghm

Karolina Markiewicz/Pascal Piron

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ola from Homs, and therefore I forbid my tears. End of hope in Sicily, Biennale in Venice. @kultursalzkaro

Sicile: Le programme de sauvetage de l’UE en 10 points, en action. Point 2: empreintes digitales des survivants. Pas des morts. @kulturstruktur

(Karolina Markiewicz + Pascal Piron) English translation: Sicily: EU rescue programme in 10 action points. Point 2: fingerprints of the survivors. Not of the dead. @kultursalzkaro (Karolina Markiewicz + Pascal Piron)

Mike Stubbs

All you can do is glean information from the tiniest fragments. Trying to see everything makes you ill. @mikestubbs

Neil Cummings

Calculate the magnitude of the carbon bubble caused by visitors to the Biennale. PS Carbon Tracker and Carbon footprint calculator

Laboratory of the Insurrectionary Imagination

It’s time to stop pretending to do politics in the art world and get real, which means deserting – back to life @labofii

Anouchka Grose

Venice art overload sows discord in relationships. – Anouchka Grose

Venice art abundance ignites passion between viewers. – Anouchka Grose

Ania Bas

Works not made for collectors. @ania_bas

Parasites – works, spaces, events. Peripheries – distance, visibility, funding, @ania_bas

Best visitor experience – sofas, loos, goodies, smiles. @ania_bas

Ben Lloyd

“Mediterranean Migrant Crisis: Vaporetto to Giardini in rescue mission” @BenNebula

Huw Lemmey

What’s left worth printing on paper? @spitzenprodukte

Terry Smith

Nationalism is a powerful divisive tool. If complex social, economical and personal issues can be encapsulated into a simple idea then there can be catastrophic consequences. If the problem can be made to seem simple then the solution can also be made to be simple, so simple it seems a gun or a knife can solve it.

There have been many people outraged by the utter disregard for human rights by various Governments around the world, there have been many calls for cultural boycotts, which seems, in the bigger picture like a small kind of response and the least we can do. Of course any action that might bring an end to injustice might seem the right action. However perhaps International isolationism may not deliver the aims of a boycott, which are in themselves complicated, to change the direction of a state or to show solidarity with a repressed people. But what if we did the opposite rather that culturally isolate a country embrace it, replace politics with poetics, war with jaw, violence with passivity, action with non action, the sword with a pen, a gun with spray paint, a bullet with a crayon?

These are some of the questions we are asking at Venice Agendas for the breakfast debates at CZ95 and in the evenings at the Imagina Cafe VENICE AGENDAS AT CZ95 CZ95, Giudecca 95, 30133 Venezia Vaporetto: Zitelle on lines 2, 4.1 and 4.2 VENICE AGENDAS AT IMAGINA CAFÉ Imagina Café, Rio Terà Canal, 3126 Dorsoduro, (Near Campo Santa Margherita) http://www.veniceagendas.eu

Robert Frankle

Where is the Venice in the Biennale? @pressroomvenice

56th Venice Biennale = Documenta 11 redux ? @pressroomvenice

Ami Clarke