Above: after carefully packing away Travelling Light, getting the palazzo's pictures and furniture back into place caused anxiety and OCD for some members of the team as we awaited the agency's inspection.
The show came to a premature end, hours before schedule, because an off-duty policeman who knew the owner of the palazzo, wandered in...we were informed that what we were doing was illegal and that the show must come down immediately or else we would face a heavy fine.
Although the exhibition was an official collateral event listed by the British Council on the Biennale Art map (http://www.artupdate.com/), the venue itself hadn't been registered by the owner for use as a public space...we must have forgotten to mention it...
Back on March 27th, we met Daniel Birnbaum at the Biennale press conference in London and when we asked him the secret to becoming a curator of the Venice Biennale, he told us, "just have lots of parties, with art".
So, in the end, Daniel saved the day as we able to quote him on the police statement, declaring: "we held a party with art", therefore, not breaking any laws, pacifying the authorities and retaining some of our original guerilla integrity.
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