VENICE—Confusion about how to get from one place to another is par for the course in Venice during the Biennale, when one finds oneself frowning over exotic looking invitations for exotic seeming parties in exotic sounding locations bearing equally exotic directions. My experience Tuesday night was typical. Joseph Kosuth, eminence gris of texty conceptual art, had created a special project, The Language of Equilibrium, at the Armenian monastery on the Isola di San Lazzaro, an island situated in the lagoon near the Lido.

The invite showed a rudimentary map that itself looked like a work of conceptual art, showing dotted lines running from well-known locations (San Marco, the Giardini) to the island, along with the estimated travel time (6 minutes, 12 minutes) that the journey would take on a promised special shuttle boat. The shuttle left from San Zaccaria, near San Marco, where I found a group of flummoxed art types clutching invites. I joined them, having followed, Alice-in-Wonderland style, a woman in a red dress and red shoes. (Later, on the island, I would overhear the conversation, "How did you find the shuttle?" "I followed the woman in the red dress...") The shuttle arrived, and off we went.

If you think a so-called "noncommercial" event like Venice doesn't attract market players, guess again. During the 12-minute journey, a man spoke to me about his new art investment fund. I write about these matters, but even so, the notion of investing in something as subjective in value as art often brings to mind the tongue-in-cheek economic pamphlet that Henry Miller once wrote at the urging of Ezra Pound—"Money, And How It Gets That Way."

"I'm only now learning about art," said this fund fellow, as the boat neared the Isola, and Kosuth's project swam into view. He gestured vaguely around and added, "And this...world."

In any event, as the boat neared the island it moved into the eerie glow emitted by its buildings. Kosuth had covered the monastery's exterior with fluorescent tubing spelling out words in various languages. The effect, at night at least, is otherworldly, with the words illuminating the hundreds of revelers on the lawn.

But the light was not strong enough to blind us from real-world concerns. "Forget the money! The bureaucracy!" said Kosuth's dealer Sean Kelly, as he described the ordeal of arranging such an ambitious installation in Venice (It’s on view through November). Money again! By then we had landed on the Isola, which resembled a sort of Kythira for partying art folks—prosecco, canapes, chatter. The mood there was typical of the first few days of the Biennale. The art world, having just landed, seemed at once weary and excited, at once enervated and invigorated. Veterans of the festival circuit looked around with expressions that said both: "Oh no... this again?" and "Oh boy! This! Again!"

The Kosuth dinner—a handful of courses from a Michelin-rated chef— took place at long tables arranged around the monastery's central courtyard, and was altogether delightful. Kelly, a James Joyce buff, discussed Ulysses; Art Pace director Matthew Drutt talked about the unlikely charms of Texas; and all the while Kosuth produced text projected on the courtyard wall opposite the tables that described the significance of the ingredients of whatever course we were on. But the information we got was partial, our view half blocked by a leafy tree. The Chicago-based collector sitting next to me and I commiserated about the frustration of this, and then we both just decided to make do with the snippets of text we could see—lemon...orzo...duck…—taking things in stride, letting all be a surprise, proceeding, even if we didn't quite know where we were headed. It seemed very Venice.