Feature: Installation "Faust" wins top Venice prize for posing urgent questions about time

German choreographer Anne Imhof was awarded the Golden Lion for best national participation at the 57th Art Biennale in Venice.

This year's biennial international art exhibition in Venice opened to public on Saturday and runs through Nov. 26.

For her piece titled "Faust" after the classic German tale of a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and power, Imhof filled the white, rectangular pavilion of Germany with intersecting glass walls and floors, and then placed a group of performers in the basement.

Visitors observe the performers crawling around in the space under the transparent floors.

Sometimes the imprisoned young men and women press their hands against the glass floor above their heads, or light small fires that eventually fizzle out, or entangle in bizarre embraces that could be fights.

What they have in common is their affect, which ranges from apathy to distress.

Outside, the white pavilion is guarded by a pair of young black Doberman dogs. "A room, a house, a pavilion, an institution, a state," writes the artist. "The performers, elated and degraded (are) simultaneously body, sculpture, and commodity... we find ourselves in the midst of various constructions of power and powerlessness, capriciousness and violence, resistance and freedom."

The effect is distressing and entrancing at the same time. People stood in line over an hour to gain entrance, and once inside, seemed glued to the action as they followed the angst-ridden performers creeping around underneath their feet.

The jury cited Imhof's "precise decisions about objects, images, bodies and sounds" that created "a powerful and disturbing installation that poses urgent questions about our time."

The Silver Lion for promising young artist went to Hassan Khan, who was born in 1975 in Britain and lives and works in Cairo.

In "Composition for a Public Park," Khan stood small speakers on metal poles in oval patterns enclosing a gently rising and falling grassy slope, which is itself enclosed by surrounding trees.

Visitors stumble upon this secret garden almost by chance, and are drawn in by the music wafting from the multichannel sound system on a loop.

Almost imperceptible at first, the music unfolds into three movements made of a brass ensemble, Egyptian horns, a piano solo, classical Arab music, string quartets, and voices reciting snippets of poetry.

The musical layers mingle with the natural sounds of the garden to immerse the visitor in a dreamy, achingly beautiful world that one is reluctant to leave. Endit