Public art of the day

Apparently, the British artist-film-maker Isaac Julien is directing a public reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital at the Venice Biennale [ht: sk]. (Julien is the director of a 2013 film Kapital, which is also being shown at the biennale.)

Perhaps it was too much to ask that the curator of the biennale’s central exhibition, Okwui Enwezor, actually understand his Marx (although the reporter, Charlotte Higgins, evidently does):

So what is the corollary of staging Das Kapital? I ask Enwezor. Did not Marx foresee the end of capitalism, inevitably brought down by its internal contradictions? “His programme was to use capitalism to achieve social equality,” says Enwezor. “I don’t think that Marx, had he lived, would have wanted capitalism to end.” I am slightly confused by this: I am no Marx expert, but I had gained the distinct impression that although Marx admired the energy and inventiveness of capitalism, he wanted it overthrown and replaced with a system that allowed people justice and dignity.