I dream that the Biennale has been built inside a border terminal, lit like a job fair. Above the gates the signs do not say ARRIVALS or DEPARTURES. They say REUSE. Everyone who enters leaves one small thing at the turnstile: a signature, a juror’s badge, a photograph beside the lion, an hour of attendance. The machines do not ask what anyone thinks of the institution. They ask only for enough trace to say later: you agreed.

Behind the turnstiles sit the women of the labeling rooms, working at kitchen tables while power strips grow from the floor like roots. Children, sleeping fathers, benefit forms, headphones, tags. Every time the stream of orders accelerates, the room stretches without gaining a meter. The table becomes kitchen, school, office, tribunal. A soft voice from the loudspeaker calls it local empowerment. A placard on the wall promises that everything will be secure, smooth, well organized. Nobody shouts. That is why the weight can be heard.

Then a stage technician appears with a screwdriver and a roll of blank labels. He does not dismantle the machine. He only changes the plaques. Where there was PRIZE, he writes LICENSE. Where there was PARTICIPATION, he writes RIGHT OF REUSE. Where there was CONTRACT, he writes CAPTURED PRESENCE. The pavilions begin to reject not the exhibition but their own pedestals. The metal lions open like packaging, and inside them are carbon paper, stamps, temporary badges, procurement receipts.

I look for an exit and find instead four cold plates bolted to the wall: author, date, defect, aperture. Four dry lines. Almost nothing. When I press them against the turnstile, the turnstile does not break. It slows. For the first time the machine has to distinguish presence from consent, signature from mortgage.

Behind me the hall stays clean, but it loses the right to speak with my voice. The women at the tables do not stand up. They only move the power strip outside the perimeter drawn on the floor, and half the badges stop working.

I wake with the ugly clear idea that conflict often begins when you withdraw the license of reuse, not when you raise your voice.