The Biennale has opened several weeks earlier than usual this year, and the inauguration was Saturday, April 20. What remained usual, however, was the mass of international art(s) journalists and assorted contributors that swarmed the streets of Castello for the three preceding days.
I usually enjoy seeing the exotic plumage of these migrating creatures, not to mention their extraordinary behavior, but this year netted little. A good friend told me he saw a person in the street wearing a toilet on his head and I’m really sorry I missed that. Lino’s father-in-law was a plumbing contractor and was occasionally seen around town carrying a toilet on his shoulder — clearly he didn’t realize the artistic potential in his humdrum little existence and its porcelain trappings. I suspect that supporting four children during a world war might have limited his frivolous side, if he had one.
But such a jape would only have appeared frivolous back then, when life was real and life was earnest. Whoever porta’d that potty the other day was doing it seriously. To what end, I can’t say, but everything at the Biennale is done with a degree of seriousness denser than black granite. Along with the art we get diatribes and philippics and harangues, and also sermons and lectures and platitudes. Lots of words that labor to obscure rather than illuminate. Speaking of art — I mean, words — I’m remembering this self-portrait by Salvator Rosa (1645):
Back to the bony statue on the boat. It has been moored alongside the fruit and vegetable boat at the bottom of via Garibaldi. It will be there till the Biennale closes in November.
But if you desire meaning, maybe the following will help:
The exhibition reflects the dissociation and exploitation of a colonial political system that has attempted to unravel the fraught complexities of contemporary Puerto Rican identities. The estrangement that is inherent to the colonial status is an extended act of violence resulting in a psychic malaise because of what Anibal Quijano has so aptly described and defined as “the coloniality of power”.
At the heart of the exhibition stands Celso González’ monumental Yola Sculpture, “San Juan Bautista,” a powerful symbol of Puerto Rico’s enduring spirit. This site-specific installation challenges the constraints of its political status, whil honoring the Island’s rich maritime heritage.
There have been boats at the Biennale before now. The water is evidently an element that helps some projects seem more interesting. Or important.
Vik Muniz’s floating installation Lampedusa was launched during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The article in published in the Haifa Museum of Art publication stated that “the 14-meter-long (45 feet) paper boat was coated with a giant reproduction of the Italian newspaper that reported the tragedy. The gargantuan paper boat drifted along the Canal Grande, Venice’s main transportation route, docking near luxury yachts. As art critic Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian, “This art project has been overtaken by real-life horror. Perhaps, in theory, it seemed reasonable to make a vaguely thought-provoking, ‘playful’ piece about migration. But now the scale of our cruelty, the true consequences of all the rhetoric that dehumanises migrants, have become so lethally clear. Surely, art on such a theme should be less equivocal, more angry.”
Well said, Mr. Jones. But this is the Biennale, where scruples find little nourishment.
I’m going to go back to floating St. John. Despite not being any closer to resolving urgent questions of urban injustice or the coloniality of power, I’m starting to feel that we understand each other.
Last Sunday morning was special: Several very different events were rolled into one efficient package, and the sun came out and burned off the mist, and also there were leftovers.
The amalgamated elements were: A Venetian-rowing race, a deft promotion of the next Winter Olympics, and an appeal for world peace that was ingeniously linked to the preceding two. And there was food — oh, right. I already mentioned that.
The race is called the “regata of the 50 caorlinas” to indicate the type and number of the boats involved. Allow me a bit of backstory to help you appreciate it more fully.
Some years ago (I’m estimating as many as 15), there was formed a type of consortium of the local rowing clubs called the Coordinamento Associazioni Remiere della Voga alla Veneta (Coordination of the Venetian Rowing Associations). The consortium still exists in a suspended-animation sort of way, but while it was young and glowing it organized an annual boat festival and race on Saint Andrew’s Day (Nov. 30, as you know) because Andrew is the patron saint of boatwrights, among many other things.
Almost all of the rowing clubs have at least one caorlina — a trusty boat created generations ago for lugging cargo around — and it’s very useful for fun because six people can row it even if they aren’t all at any particular level of skill. It’s a social sort of thing.
So for a few years this race was a great occasion for everybody to just throw themselves into the scrum. Your correspondent participated in one edition and our little crew was quite the mixed bag. I can’t remember our position at the finish — we were pretty far back. Maybe we’re still rowing. Your correspondent also participated for several years in the clubhouse kitchen, preparing and slinging vast amounts of pasta at the ravenous rowers and their relatives and friends afterward. The fame of this little jamboree spread across the Venetian-rowing world, so crews came from Cremona and Florence and Milan and Pavia, and so on. That’s how the number of participating boats rose to a mighty 50. If there was a party for just us rowers, that was it.
The last edition was held in 2018. Then Covid and the lockdown and many other things happened, and no more festa until now. And why now, considering that St. Andrew is on vacation in the month of April? Because April 6 was designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. And so once again, Venice provides the perfect setting for initiatives or ceremonies that have little, if anything, to do with it.
I’m thinking back to the years when one of the more active and public members of the Coordinamento was vehement in his opposition to traditional rowing events being exploited for touristic or other purposes of promotion. He would shout “We’re not figuranti!” (the costumed performers who parade in period dress to enliven certain events or ceremonies).
But here, in the fullness of time, it appears that what was once something truly local, that had nothing to do with anything but its participants, was suddenly the perfect way to draw attention to other things that have nothing to do with the city or its people. This, without a squeak from the former paladin of Venetian-ness. They like to say that Venice is the world city of peace, but I think it’s more like the world city of irony. But let’s get back to the events.
This brings us to the second element: Sport. Not Venetian rowing, per se, but the 2026 Winter Olympics. The venues will be divided between two regions — Lombardy and Veneto — and naturally Cortina d’Ampezzo, the Pearl of the Dolomites, represents the Veneto. Cortina is arguably one of the most famous names in winter sports, having hosted the winter Olympics in 1956. So Sunday’s race was an extra-Venetian way of publicizing the Olympics, and also — did you notice? — the Veneto Region. It was a match made, if not in heaven, certainly in many offices, bars and restaurants.
Third and final element: Peace. We all need it and want it, and the Olympics were a fine reason to ask Antonio Silvio Calo’, president of the Fondazione Venezia per la Ricerca sulla Pace (Venice Foundation for Research on Peace) for his thoughts on the subject.
Bonus points: The regional councilor for sport, Cristiano Corazzari, drew our attention to the “Ancient memory of the ‘Olympic truce,’ that it should continue to be the central theme to evoke the profound value of the Olympics.” If the long jump and the luge can promote peace, I say let’s extend the Olympic truce for the next 250 years.
Fun fact: The sacred truce did not put a stop to all warfare, only to conflicts which hindered the games. (Always check the fine print before signing anything, especially a truce.) The truce protected travelers on their way to the sanctuary and only forbade military operations against and by the organizing city. But even this truce was breakable. In 420 BC, the Spartans were excluded from the Olympic games because they had attacked a part of the Elean territory. In 364 BC, Arcadian soldiers even attacked the holy domain of Olympia during the games. So seek it as you will, peace appears to remain an elusive and fickle ideal.
Back to Venice. Boats, Olympics, and peace got wrapped up together, and then we ate bigoli in salsa and went home. The caorlinas and their rowers went home, the Olympics went back to the offices and the construction sites, and peace is yet to be found. If only we could remember where we put it the last time we used it.
If you’re in the mood to live the race, here goes. The race itself begins at about 6:00.
This is a simple tale composed of two parts. (A) What we need and (B) how hard it can be to obtain it because of (C) (my error, the tale has three parts) other people. To demonstrate I take the situation of the new experimental temporary chemical toilet (A) near the Arsenal and (C) the city of Venice, some city councillors of.
People need places to relieve themselves, we’ll start there. On the whole, visitors manage the situation by stopping at bars/cafe’s, buying something, and using the facilities. But sometimes bars/cafe’s are closed. Sometimes they are crowded. Sometimes the WC is mysteriously out of service. And sometimes the owners have to crack down on tourists who show up in groups of which one person buys a coffee and all the rest use the bathroom, as we call it in the US. Not made up. So one person is relieved, so to speak, and his or her nine friends have to start looking for a toilet somewhere else, or buy a coffee, which is clearly something they were hoping to avoid.
Impatient and drunk males at big gatherings at night have no problem at all: Find the nearest wall. Vertical structures exert an atavistic allure to men. Ladies, you’re on your own, as usual. But there are small side streets — I’m thinking of offshoots of Campo Santa Margherita — whose residents have been driven to install a gate to prevent revelers from using the street to resolve the situation.
But the choice is not kiosks or nothing. There are permanent public loos in Venice. But there aren’t very many, their hours vary WIDELY — 8:00 AM to 8:30 PM is rational, so is 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, but 11:00 AM to 4:30 PM or 10 AM – 7:30 PM is not. And they aren’t always open. The WC by the Piazza San Marco is scheduled to open at 9:30 AM, and when I passed by at a very reasonable 10:45 AM it was shut up tight. These hours undoubtedly reflect the convenience of the staff, and not the public. Or whether the Comune has paid the water bill?
In an attractive gesture of collaboration, the city has an app to guide you to the nearest public toilet. Perhaps it will be open, perhaps not, but at least you can say you found it.
I decided to experiment and went looking for one of the city’s toilets last Saturday afternoon around 5:00 PM. I was near the Arsenal, and wondered where the large sign indicating a nearby loo might lead me. I didn’t need it, and what a good thing that turned out to be.
So to review: The options for needy travelers are: Resort to one of the numberless bars/cafes, when available either geographically or according to time of day; or public toilet, when available either geographically or according to time of day. Or wall. Or canal.
Let’s return to the kiosk. The Comune opened the public-toilet project for bids in 2019, with a budget of 5 million euros, and only one company submitted a proposal. Hygien Venezia was prepared to proceed, then the pandemic intervened. So now, three years later, the company has finally installed its creation for a two-week trial. Then all the reports and analyses and opinions and pros and cons will be thrown into a box and shaken (I’m making that up), and some decision will be made on installing the 20 more that the company is ready to place strategically around town.
Don’t assume that decision will inevitably be in the positive. This being Venice, some people have complained. From shops and hotels and other enterprises, some people have objected. The Nuova Venezia only referred to the protesters as “the categories.” What category? The Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners? (It exists, but not in Italy.)
Whatever the “categories” might be, eight city councilors have spoken up, expressing a desire to inquire of the mayor “on the basis of what information is it considered that Venice possessed the characteristics to manage the cleaning (removal of waste) of 28 chemical toilets.” It occurs to me that Hygien Venezia probably has foreseen the problem and the solution, and described the plan on the bid itself. I’ll bet that they will be able to provide answers as needed, without bothering the mayor.
Perhaps the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon has arrived in Venice. There may well be those who do not wish to see one of these kiosks near their homes or places of business. I will grant you that the general lack of space here means that there is a risk that a new structure, however modest, could make the immediate area even more crowded. However, there are also campos and fondamentas that can boast of space. But let’s not quibble. Essentially, there seems to be an innate propensity to assume something new won’t work rather than consider ways in which in might perhaps be configured to work.
In my view, this is another of the many situations in which Venice’s perplexity as to how to manage the city comes to the fore. Lots of real cities have public toilets in the streets. Paris comes to mind, obviously — if there’s a city with bars/cafe’s at every turn, that would be Paris, and yet there are 420 cubicles on the streets of the City of Light, used 3 million times a year. I grant that Parisian streets tend to be more spacious than your average calle. But the port of Piraeus has concise public toilets, as do Madrid, and Oslo, and Berlin, and so on. Or at the very least, reorganize the public toilets in Venice with rational hours and doors that can be opened.
“The categories” want tourists, and then people grumble at how demanding those tourists can be. It seems to me that Venice might occasionally consider dismounting from its high horse on certain issues. Give the horse a rest.
During the past two weeks there has been fog: Some days on, then sunshine, then back the fog rolls again. It’s very poetic and romantic, looked at one way. But it’s highly inconvenient if you need to take the vaporetto to do something unpoetic, because some lines are suspended, and the rest are all sent up and down the Grand Canal. This means that you may well be walking farther to your destination than you had budgeted time and energy for. Maybe you yourself can manage that, but if you’re a very sick and frail old lady — looking at you, Maria from upstairs — who has to get to the hospital for her chemotherapy, the fact that your vaporetto doesn’t exist today means you’re forced to take a taxi to the hospital. That’ll be 50 euros please. Going, and then coming home. Not at all poetic if you’re living on 750 euros a month.
But let’s say you’re on one of the vaporettos, living a routine day. Don’t relax completely. Because even though the battelli (the big fat waterbuses) have radar, and so does the ferryboat trundling up and down the Giudecca Canal between Tronchetto and the Lido, that doesn’t guarantee that the drivers are looking at it, or if they are, are understanding what they are seeing. Radar, much like bras or penicillin, is intended to help you, but only if you actually use it.
I mention this because yesterday the fog was pretty thick. And around 1:00 PM, the #2 that crosses the Giudecca Canal between the Zattere and the Giudecca itself collided with the ferry. At that point the two routes are operating at right angles to each other. Everybody knows this. I mean, one shouldn’t be even minimally surprised to find these two boats out there.
But find each other they did. In the collision nobody was hurt, but one passenger temporarily lost his mind and punched the marinaio, the person who ties up the boat at each stop, in the face. Why the marinaio? Because he was there, I suppose. He certainly wasn’t navigating. Nor was the captain, evidently.
To translate the phrase in the brief article in La Nuova Venezia, “Probably the incident was caused by the thick fog.” I don’t mean to be pedantic, but “The fog made me do it” doesn’t sound quite right. The fog had been out for hours; it hardly sneaked up on the boats from behind. The pedant further wonders why the fog gets all the blame. It didn’t grab the two boats and push them together, like two hapless hamsters. One might more reasonably say that the incident was caused by two individuals, one per boat, who were not paying attention either to the water ahead or to their radar. Footnote: These vehicles operate on schedules. I’m going to risk saying that one could easily predict when they would be, as they put it here, “in proximity to each other.” If one wanted to.
But let’s return to the poetry.
Rio de la Ca’ di Dio. The forecast is for more fog tomorrow. If I put on my gray coat, I’ll disappear.