It seemed like a good idea at the time: After a long day looking at work and talking to folks, why not tag along with some people more glamorous than we are and head to the Dark Side Club, a nightly series of gatherings organized around the Biennale. Hard to get an invite? Cool! Starts at 11 and continues all night? We’re not as old as we look, dammit! In a fantastic palazzo that no one can seem to find? Right on! Prosecco and chocolates? Hell, yeah! Lectures to a silent and reverential crowd at midnight? Ahem…

We may have snoozed through much of our college art history lectures, but isn’t being part of a self-consciously avant-garde group supposed to be a hell of a lot of fun? The idea behind the Dark Side Club is a solid one—interesting people drinking cocktails and talking about interesting things in a beautiful room—but in practice, it was pretty solemn and somewhat humorless. The roster for the three days includes Greg Lynn, Patrick Schumacher, Mirko Zardini, all interesting folks, and the whole shebang is organzied by Jeffrey Kipnis. We were sitting near Peter Cook of Archigram fame—and we bet those guys knew a thing or too about constructive troublemaking—and a pal asked him if the program the night before had been as dry. “This is positively WET compared to last night!” he responded, and promptly fell sound asleep in his chair.