The criticisms generated by productions as significant as the Venice Biennale reveal just as much—if not more—about the central ecology of the event as its official material. Evidenced by the gradient of oppositions representing the national pavilions (and even a handful of Aravena’s curated projects), the inclusive nature of the “Reporting from the Front” agenda manages, intentionally or not, to filter in detractors and cultivate an atmosphere of issue-airing.

The assembly of sometimes wildly disparate perspectives and approaches that comprise this year’s Biennale sets up the conditions for the calling out and, hopefully, working through of the architecture discipline’s contemporary conflicts and quandaries. Several counter movements worked their way into the exhibition—stirrings, perhaps, that are indicative of interests to which the Arsenale and Giardini will give form or ground (again) next time.

At the outset, Alejandro Aravena’s opening panel, “Meetings on Architecture: Infrastructure,” betrayed the diversity ideals of “Reporting from the Front” as pretense with its all-male line-up. The ensuing critical response online made obvious the limitations of the Biennale’s own infrastructure.

Additionally, operating since (at least) the 2006 Biennale, the Dark Side Club is an exclusive gathering of devil’s advocates against the moment’s curated theme. The 2016 series—three nights, three themes coinciding with the first days of the press opening—featured Friedrich Ludewig of ACME, Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, and Ma Yansong of MAD. The topics publicized for the invitation-only salon included a battle cry against architecture’s tendencies toward servitude, a challenge to architecture’s moralizing and politicization, and a shaming of the tenets of humanism.

The digital occupation of the US Pavilion by Detroit Resists is a protest within a protest. If “The Architectural Imagination” is a stand for the generative potential of distance from reality and the inspirational power of the image, its cooption by an activist coalition is a kick-back to the political and circumstantial. The speculative, its dissidents argue, not only is a luxury of privilege, but a slight to and whitewashing of Detroit’s lived architectures and their everyday builders and residents.

Speaking of the luxury of privilege, The Architecture Lobby also took aim at architecture's labor practices, highlighting the scourge of unpaid or underpaid work with the launch of their book, Asymmetric Labors: The Economy of Architecture in Theory and Practice. Meanwhile, @BirdsofVenice, a satirical Twitter feed of running reactions to the Biennale experience, pokes fun at choice aspects of the Biennale's whole enterprise: “This year’s #VeniceBiennale Golden Tote Bag goes to all the interns who won’t get to visit the exhibitions they’ve designed, @Arch_Lobby.”