At the press conference for the Biennale media previews, Rob Storr observed that "we are living in pretty terrible times." He also said that his big international show, which takes up the enormous main building of the Arsenale, has in it "reflections of that history." To put it mildly. In fact, the first half or more of his group exhibition is given over to artists who are almost all pre- occupied with politics. It's very much about a world in crisis.

"Think With the Senses— Feel With the Mind", as his show is called, opens with an installation by the New York-based Italian artist Luca Buvoli, whose work — which runs across the floor, up walls and hangs from the ceiling, and also includes several video screens, is about the promises of 20th century Modernism, failed and otherwise, and also its ugly undercurrents. Buvoli's chief text is Marinetti's Italian Futurist manifesto of 1904, Modernism's most problematic Ur-text, its poisoned gospel, with its wildly inflamed language about burning museums and war as"the world's only hygeine."

But in its passionate understanding of the beauty of the modern world, it's also infinitely seductive. ("A roaring car that seems to run on machine gun fire is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.") In one very shrewd gesture, Buvoli has the Marinetti texts misread on camera by a series of readers trying, imperfectly, to interpret the Italian originals. Modernism, in its promise and its peril, has come down to us in broken English.

This is a very canny overture to the show Storr is bringing us into, one in which art responds to a modern world in a state of emergency — in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and every borderland — an emergency that is in some ways a consequence of its modernity — and in other ways a consequence of the world's failure to become modern. More later.

Venice in the pouring rain. Forget the Venice of Caneletto and Monet. Think Turner and Whistler. Sometimes it stops for a while. The birds chirp tentaively. Then the skies open again. Myself and the rest of the Migratory Art Herd all huddle under our umbrellas, trying to keep our catalogues dry.

The Biennale was founded in 1895 as an international exhibition. This year it's more international than ever, with 76 participant nations, 34 at the Arsenale and the Giardini, the main locales of the Biennale, and the rest scattered around the city. There's a heavy emphasis on non-Western nations. The idea that France, Germany, the U.K. or the U.S. are the centers of the art world is being put away. On Sunday, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to Malick Sidibe, the photographer from Mali, whose wonderful studio portraits and pictures of people getting ready for a night on the town I first started to notice in the 90s. He's one of those inspired portraitists of ordinary people, like James van der Zee or Mike Disfarmer, who combine a fine eye wth a very at ease sense of the people they look at (and live among.) He's a good choice.

At a press conference this morning, Rob Storr, the first American to run the show, talked a bit about his ambitions for his own show, the big international exhibition at the Arsenale called Think With the Senses, Feel With the Mind. He's been billing it as a show about the convergence of conceptual work and work that emphasizes material. That's true as far as it goes, but I have a somewhat diffferent take on it. More on that later.

The migratory art herd is all here. (That of course includes me.) Lots of women in Prada. Lots of guys in Dieter Sprocket gear. (Shaved head, glasses, black suit — hey wait; that describes me, too.) And though this isn't a sales fair, lots of shop talk. Coming up in a few hours, the press conference to open the media preview days and the opening of the main international exhibit organized by Rob Storr. I'll report back on all of this later.