Venice: I am not making this up

let’s lighten up

July 8, 2024 11 Comments

So I now walk away from the curious fresco crowned by the streetlight, and focus my attention on the streetlights themselves. We take them for granted, but lighting up Venice was an endeavor that went on for centuries and involved no granting at all.

This is the Ponte dei Ferali, looking east toward the church of San Zulian.

Ponte dei Ferali, looking west toward Calle Fiubera. As far back as the 1200’s the *feraleri*, or makers of streetlights, had set up their shops on nearby streets, as well as on the bridge itself (hence the name).

This is a *feral*; you’ve seen them all over the city in various sizes and shapes. They brought Venice to blazing life (eventually). Oil was the best they could do until 1843, after which gas was the combustible. Between 1915 and 1918 Venice returned to primeval darkness, hiding from Austrian bombardment, although the bombs still fell. There are numerous plaques around the city commemorating the destruction caused by what reached a total of 1,029 bombs. (In a single night — February 26-27, 1918 — 300 bombs, explosive and incendiary, were launched on the city.) Light returned with peace, but in 1927 gas gave way to electricity.

Even though streetlighting in many places has now reached intense levels, there are still stretches of street here and there that reveal what darkness used to mean. I’m not referring to the medieval days with their timid little lamps at streetcorners; even as recently as the late Nineties the only light in the darkness of our stretch of fondamenta between Santa Margherita and Santa Marta was the glow from a single shop window. I called it the “lighthouse of the neighborhood.” When the street lights were finally installed, the glare was so extreme that I felt like we were walking home across a football field on game night.

Via Garibaldi gleams in the distance, but in this tiny calle you’re on your own.

For centuries the streets had been illuminated to a feeble degree only by the faint flickering from the little lamps (cesendelli) at shrines on various street corners. “Be home by dark” really meant something because by 1128, due to the inordinate number of corpses found lying around the streets in the morning, the government began to take seriously the need to create real illumination.

Enter the ferali, or also farai, of various sizes, providing a great new line of work for their makers, the feraleri (not to mention the oil merchants). The parish priest was responsible for maintaining them, but the expense was covered by the government. By 1214 there were enough feraleri to merit their own scuola, or guild, and their devotional altar was in the nearby church of San Zulian. Fun fact: There is an osteria in Dorsoduro named Ai Do Farai, Venetian for “at the two streetlamps.”

But there were still plenty of dark streets to navigate on your way home from the theatre, or to secretly visit your lady- or boyfriend, or whatever you were up to after sundown. In 1450 the Venetian government had become so exasperated by the nocturnal carnage that it passed a law requiring people to carry a light– candles, lanterns, torches — when they were out at night. (Yes: We order you to protect your life! See: Seatbelts.) Not only was this a good idea in itself, but it was equally good as a job.

Enter the codega (CODE-eh-ga). He was a very poor hired man who waited with a lantern outside theatres, gambling houses, or other festive places, or was available on call, to light your way to wherever you were going next. Sometimes the lantern was suspended from a long pole.

The codega’s candle was better than nothing, but those who carried oil lanterns undoubtedly shed more light. The oil was usually rendered pig fat (Venice is so romantic); it’s generally accepted that the word itself derived from *cotica*, or pork rind.

Once your eyes adjust to the ambient light, these lamps seem adequate. Not Fifth Avenue, true, but better than a candle.

Your mind adjusts this scene to say the street is lit. You instinctively ignore the dark intervals because you’re on the way to the next little luminescent island.

Now just imagine the scene without the streetlights. And speaking of wartime blackouts, the same curfew applied during the Second World War. Anyone born in the late Thirties only knew the city as dark at night. Lino remembers when the lights were turned on after peace was declared. It was the first time in his life he’d ever seen the streets lit up, and what he remembers wasn’t so much the brightness itself as everyone in the neighborhood waiting outside together for the lights to come on, and how they clapped and rejoiced when it did.

In 1719 a nobleman named Stefano Lippomano is regarded as being the bright spark who convinced the shopkeepers around San Marco to put an oil lamp near their shops between the Mercerie and the Rialto. Did they need much convincing? (“You’ll make more money this way…”.) This worthy idea spread through the city to the joy of everyone except — naturally — the codeghe.

In 1726 a proclamation bearing the seal of the Signori di notte al criminal (the police magistrates) denounced the habit that the humble lantern-carriers had developed of smashing the streetlamps and carrying away their wrought-iron supports. It would be no comfort at all to the embattled men to know that one of the most prestigous international awards for innovation in lighting today is called the Codega Award.

Fun fact: Between San Marco and Rialto is the Hotel Al Codega. Presumably well-lit.

The codega walking you home. This illustration is one of a famous series of illustrations by Gaetano Zompini, who between 1746 and 1754 created a collection of scenes of everyday jobs practiced in the streets of Venice. The new idea of attaching his lantern to a wall and sending HIM home was one of those many human blows that mark the march of progress.

But smashing the lamps was futile — streetlights were the future. Crime was down at last, and between 1721 and 1732 the Signori di notte al criminal created a system of 834 public streetlights — not a lot, but it was a start — paid for by voluntary contributions. There were private lights on palace balconies, but the public lamps were lit by a public lamplighter, paid for by the magistrate.

The old lamplighter. He appears to be carrying lighted oil up the ladder. Seems risky in lots of ways but a better alternative (easier? cheaper?) hadn’t presented itself.

Everything settled now? Not even close. The problems in organizing and maintaining this municipal necessity were endless. By 1740 there were 1,046 public streetlights, but those voluntary contributions weren’t nearly enough to cover expenses and so a tax was levied on every “head of family.” The astonishing inequality of this tax burden (indigent widows paid the same as patrician clans) led to its abolition in 1756.

Flaws and defects in this worthy undertaking abounded. Service was terrible. The lamplighters didn’t always light (or keep alight) the lamps; the oil destined for burning turned out to be of an even lower quality than agreed (and paid for), and also was somehow inexplicably often in short supply, except for that time when the inspector general made a surprise visit to the warehouse and discovered 40,000 more liters of oil than were listed on the register; the lamps themselves weren’t especially sturdy, being made of sheet metal, often tin; the feraleri were not always of a consistently high level of skill or reliability (not charlatans, exactly….); and the fragility of a flame floating in oil facing wind and storms was all too evident. The brightness of everybody’s hopes was faint in comparison to the reality of, well, reality. The Serenissima kept trying to improve the situation by giving out new contracts to suppliers and artisans but graft and corruption reigned. The courts were full of complaints and denunciations, and those were only the most serious cases. But there was no going back.

This is dawn in the winter. Every little bit helps.

Despite all these problems, Venice at night had become something phenomenal. Carlo Goldoni, returning to Venice in 1733 after some time away, was astounded by what he found.

“Independent of the street illumination, there is that of the shops that stay open in all weathers until 10:00 at night and a great part of them don’t close until midnight, and plenty of others don’t close at all.” I pause to let that sink in.

He goes on: “In Venice you find at midnight, just as at midday, food being sold in the open, all the osterie are open, and beautiful dinners prepared in dozens of hotels and neighborhoods; because it isn’t so common in Venice that the diners are of high society dinners, but rather the really cheap little places (ritrovi di lira e soldo) are where you find the groups of the greatest liveliness and liberty.” In other words, the regular folks out there living it all the way up.

He concludes: “In summertime the Piazza San Marco and surrounding areas are busier at night than during the day, with men and women of every sort.”

Goldoni might have been talking about something like this.

By 1775 there were 1,778 public streetlights. Still not enough. On September 7, 1796 the magistrates proposed installing at least “one lamp every hundred paces.” So 1,145 additional lamps were set up, and duly noted in the register (catastico) that hadn’t been updated since 1740.

I’m sure this improvement got compliments from the French when Napoleon arrived less than a year later, and thereafter from the Austrians who moved in. There were more than 2030 lamps around the city by then. For any trivia maniacs, at the beginning of the 1800’s there were 12 on the Giudecca, 27 in the Ghetto, 76 in the Piazza San Marco, and 1915 scattered elsewhere around the city. The Austrian occupiers’ shiny new department responsible for “police, streets, canals and illumination of the city” found itself stuck with the same problems that had bedeviled the late great Republic for centuries. Because, you know, people.

Lights by day mostly blend into the scenery.

Though lights by day do have their own fascination, when the non-artificial light is right.

Light at early twilight is lovely, though 500 years ago most people might not have begun to light the lamps just yet.

This streetlight is now as common as its more poetic predecessors.

Many streetlamps have been placed on pedestals. Highly convenient for dogs, obviously, but the real motive was almost certainly to protect them from corrosion, to which many have fallen victim. Acqua alta has damaged not only marble, but iron.

The lights in Venice, in the houses as well as on the streets, ran on gas produced by burning coal — coke, to be precise. Italy is full of decommissioned “gasometers” like the two left abandoned near San Francesco de la Vigna. (There was also one at Santa Marta, across the canal from where the prison currently sits.) Providing this crucial industrial service right next to a 16th-century church designed by Jacopo Sansovino and Andrea Palladio, and its adjacent Franciscan monastery, seems pretty crazy, but the land was there and space in Venice is valued far above rubies.

In 1969 came the switch from coal gas to methane, and the future of these relics of industrial archaeology has become as Byzantine as everything else here. The neighbors want a sports center for the kids (three high schools within a very tight radius); a German company proposed converting them to luxury hotels but got tired of waiting for the bureaucracy to conclude its Byzantine operations, and now luxury apartments have been mooted. As long as it’s luxury, that’s all that matters. After all, somebody is going to have to pay the cost of cleaning up the century of environmental horror in the soil.

A century ago, more or less, six of these “gasometers” were set up in farthest Castello near San Francesco de la Vigna, where practicality ruled over pesky artistic concerns. The two survivors here date from 1882 and 1926. Controversy continues to swirl around the fate of these structures but I mention them only because of their once-vital role in providing electric current to the city by producing gas from burning coal.

To recapitulate: Lighting Venice evolved over the generations from pig fat to methane. The world is amazed by building a city on water, but I have to confess that illuminating it was not much less impressive. If you were to want to read more — much more, and better — I recommend the lavishly illustrated “The Lights of Venice,” an extraordinary book published online in 2022 by the Fondazione Neri. I’d gladly have read it all myself, but I still haven’t finished War and Peace. But at least “Lights” has a happy ending.

Venetian Curiosities

decoding the fresco

July 1, 2024 13 Comments

Generations have made their fortunes, to one degree or another, promoting Venice as a city of mystery, secrets, enigmas. What amazes me, though, is how many discoveries one can make by just looking around. It’s not as if you have to go looking for secrets — there are plenty of extraordinary things sitting right out there in the open, in front of everybody, but that go unnoticed for ages.

I have walked with Venetians, on our way to do something, who have suddenly stopped, looked up at/around/behind/next to some normal thing (a bridge, a window, a door) at something strange or beautiful and said, “I never saw that before.”

So here is something I saw because I looked up. Was it a secret? Only from me until that afternoon.

And the date is the same when read upside down or downside up. A new sort of palindrome? A mystic code opening to another dimension? Somebody’s PIN number?

This fresco isn’t far from San Marco at the intersection of the Rio Tera’ de le Colone and Calle dei Fabbri. Here is a map to clarify.

The garish aqua-tinted circle marks the position of this now-no-longer surprise.

Looking up as I walked west along the columned walkway …

This is the view along the Rio Tera’ de le Colone, for anyone in charge of navigating.

I came upon this, as previously noted:

The passageway was temporarily blocked, as you see, but that’s not important. Just look up.

The edited street sign is a relic of a brief but intense period when the populace revolted against the “Italianizing” of the local street names; they had always been in the Venetian language, but an official urban improver in the city administration thought Italian would be better. For a while nocturnal vigilantes took a hand in correcting this cultural vandalism, but don’t let this deviation from the name printed on your map disturb you.

Back to the fresco at hand. My first theory was wrong, of course, but I wasn’t alone in supposing the dice in this design to be a mystic reminder of what may have been a gambling establishment back in 1691. There were plenty of them, but people probably didn’t need signs to show them where to go, mainly because gambling was mostly illegal.

Rummaging through the internet I found that several people had also found it reasonable to suppose that gambling inspired this curious fresco. But then I was even more surprised to discover a much simpler explanation. No need to go any further back than the 1980s and a particularly whimsical artist named Dorino Cioffi (born 1932 in Este, Veneto region), now living and working in Venice.

I could go find him and ask him about all this, and I’m not saying I won’t, but I wanted to get this little tale out into the ether. Whatever his motivations might have been, and however he may have managed to get permission to paint on a public space (“No worries, it’ll be down by Wednesday”), he created this diverting little image. Fooling people is so much fun. Carnival comes to mind.

Starting at the top is a streetlight (*feral*, in Venetian, pronounced fehr-AHL), sitting atop a cooking pot (*pignata*, in Venetian), behind three dice (*dai*, in Venetian). This is important to the story, so read on.

For reasons as yet, if ever, to be discovered, the artist devised this image to refer to the three bridges nearest to the location of the fresco. I don’t know why that spot was chosen, though if you’ve decided you want to paint on an outdoor ceiling, your options are already limited.

The aqua circle is the fresco; the yellow circle to the right is the Ponte dei Ferali, and the red on the upper left is the Ponte de le Pignate.

The Ponte dei Dai connects to the Piazza San Marco, as you see.

The Ponte de le Pignate, walking toward the Rialto bridge.

The Sotoportego dei Dai, with the bridge just coming up.

Having just crossed the bridge, I look toward the Piazza San Marco. This bridge, like so much of Venice, has been patched and repaired to a Frankensteinian degree. The long strip of lighter-colored material stretching along the right side is undoubtedly the scar left when it was necessary to open that part of the bridge to get at whatever pipe is installed beneath it. Water pipes, cables, or any other tubes that may need repairing and replacing are reached by incisions made in the bridge as needed and then closed up with varying degrees of finesse. I have seen bridges that are held together after numerous dissections by various materials from asphalt patches to leftover concrete. In some cases the only things they haven’t used to put a bridge back together are safety pins, duct tape, chewing gum, and a few staples.

This is what bridges look like under the paving stones. Stripping this bridge to its very innards was a drastic move indeed — usually they just remove the bare minimum to resolve whatever little problem may have been bubbling under the surface. I’m guessing it wasn’t the innards that were the problem, but the bridge itself.

The names of the bridges, like the streets, referred to something that was made, or sold, or both, on or near that bridge. As far back as the 1200’s the feraleri, or makers of streetlights (ferali), had set up their shops on nearby streets, as well as on the bridge itself (do not ask me how that worked). The same explanation applies to the pignate (cooking pots).

As for the dai (the original name was dadi, or dice), they were not so much produced as simply sold near their eponymous bridge. This is amusing, considering that gambling with dice was forbidden. You and your friends might call a place the “bridge of crack cocaine” if that’s what makes sense to you, but painting the name on an official street sign would be strange. I think we can agree on that?

You may be awaiting more information on the pots and the dice, which I suppose there is, but the streetlights turn out to be far more interesting than the other two items put together. (Do not recommend.) As I leave the eccentric fresco behind, though, I can say that without it I almost certainly wouldn’t have given a thought to the lamps.

My next post will be shedding plenty of light on the subject.

Events

who says there’s nothing to do here

June 21, 2024 10 Comments

You think Venice is just museums and restaurants? This particular moment will show that you can be in Venice without doing any of the things you typically expected to do, at least in the heart of darkest Castello. Sumer is definitely icumen in.

Potluck dinner tonight in Seco Marina.

This announces the Seventh (!) “Dinner of Seco.” Seco Marina is the official name of the long major street stretching parallel to the canal at the bottom of Via Garibaldi. (See map). Neighborhood gatherings of this sort are not common, but as you see, Seco is forging its own destiny. (Smaller alfresco feasts are common on the evening of the Redentore, but they are usually organized among friends and/or family.) Extremely loose and colloquial translation: “Friday June 21 at 19:00 hours (7:00 PM) let’s get together again this year to celebrate the arrival of summer. Everybody bring whatever they can, tables and chairs included. Everybody bring their desire to hang out. Let’s live our splendid city together.” And then, in a truly lovely touch that embodies the “let’s hang out” spirit, is the final phrase in Venetian: “Even foreigners are welcome.” Conclusion: “Let’s all make a huge crowd. Long live Seco!”

Not being sarcastic, I think that is absolutely adorable, because extending the invitation to foreigners (just for starters) especially in the local language, is the essence of welcome. Also not being sarcastic, maybe it’s a cleverly calculated risk, because I’m not sure how many foreigners speak Venetian.

A Venetian I know, working on the assumption that some foreigners would understand this invitation anyhow, also assumes that said foreigners would bring next to nothing to the table but a large desire to eat free food. I’m not going to be there to confirm or deny this, but the notion that at least one foreigner might interpret the invitation in this way does give an regrettable indication of how some foreigners have led at least one Venetian to imagine something so unpleasant. This foreigner (me) unhappily believes that the aforementioned Venetian may well not be wrong.

The yellow line traces Seco Marina. Just trust me, because there is no street sign. You may well have walked along it many times without even knowing its name.

While we’re on the subject of Friday evening, you could wander over to the Campo San Lorenzo and enjoy an evening organized by “Art Night Venice.” (Please note the Comune’s commitment to serving its tourists by organizing or sponsoring all these events on June 22 by promoting it on their website whose English-language option does not translate into English. You might chance your arm by using Google Translate, if you care.) There are scores — they say “hundreds” — of free events that night. Here’s an English-language rundown.

San Lorenzo is a bit out of my circuit even though it’s not far. You could be there in ten minutes or even fewer from via Garibaldi.

The decommissioned church of San Lorenzo (that once held the tomb of Marco Polo) is now used by various exhibitors of the Biennale. Art Night is a vivacious addition to the area.

On Friday, June 21 a free painting laboratory will be set up in Campo San Lorenzo “for little kids and youngsters.” I make no assumption as to the true age limit — perhaps you can tell them how young you feel and get a tube and brush or whatever they’re using to make instant art. If you prefer your paintings by Tintoretto and not unknown small people (bearing in mind that Tintoretto too started out as a kid), just wait till 20:00 hours (8:00 PM) when “Milonga in Campo” will start up; I interpret this as “music and dancing” because of the name of the organizers: Associazione Vividotango. As for who will be dancing, it may or may not be you, depending on how many beverages you might have imbibed. Wikipedia explains that “Milonga is a musical genre that originated in the Río de la Plata areas of Argentina, Uruguay, and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is considered a precursor of the tango. ‘Milonga is an excited habanera.'”

Then there is the annual five-day festa of San Piero di Casteo June 26-30. Every year thousands of revelers come to revel till midnight or so to live music and equally live mosquitoes (bring your strongest repellent). When the music ends and the food stands close, everybody all reveled out wanders homeward along the street outside our bedroom window. We are at street level. The windows are open because we are sweltering. So we get to hear everybody’s chaotic closing remarks till 1:00 AM or so.

And let us not forget that the Biennale is still in full swing. Last Wednesday morning about 4,936 kids (by my estimate) from Campalto, a village up on the way to the airport, were coming to see it. They were excited, which is nice. But 4,936 excited kids on the 5.1 vaporetto from the Zattere was not at all nice. I closed my eyes all the way back, trying not to imagine those doomed ferries in southeast Asia that go down because they are so groaningly overloaded. I asked Lino if we were going to start seeing people riding atop the vaporettos, like trains in India. He didn’t reply. I did not take that as a “no.”

But the true drama underway in the neighborhood — speaking of entertainment, which I guess we were — is the gobsmackingly ponderous Coldiretti Villaggio that has been under construction for a week and will continue to be under construction till it opens on June 28 for three gobsmacking days. I couldn’t find anything in English about this phenomenon but click on the link to see a brief video from the same undertaking a few months ago at Naples.

Stands where producers and cookers of food will be in full tilt, as well as areas presenting live farm animals of all sorts and sizes, are being set up along the Riva dei Sette Martiri as well as in the Giardini. Sorry, Biennale visitors, you’re going to have to take the scenic route to get to the pavilions.

I suppose one could look at this acreage and say it doesn’t look like so much space. Perhaps it isn’t, if you don’t want anybody to be able to move. You should know that even though entry is free, they have installed fences. (See: livestock.) The area is completely fenced in. I don’t know why that makes it all seem so much more claustrophobic, but it does. Safer? Okay. But I’ll be watching to see if there are any “exit” signs.

You may recognize this area as via Garibaldi looking toward the statue of himself. If you are asking yourself who could have thought of this area — or any part of the historic center — as being ideal for an event predicted to draw literal thousands of visitors, you will not be alone. Every single person in the neighborhood is asking the same question, and not of themselves, and not quietly or pensively. They’re asking it of anybody who had any authority to sign off on any part of it.

This event is of dimensions so extreme and gnarly that it needs its own post. Meanwhile, as I struggle to write it, may I suggest that you pause to evaluate the theoretical value/importance/necessity/desirability of awakening Venetians (I think the three days are intended to awaken people) to the problems of farmers and raisers of livestock by bringing the farmers and livestock straight into the heart of a desperately fragile World Heritage Site that is already known to be staggering under the weight of human hordes.

And on that note (I think it’s a G-flat), let the summer begin.

Events

boaty Biennale

May 4, 2024 11 Comments

It’s been several years since a boat featured in a work of art here. This construction was the first submission ever made by artists of Puerto Rico, an island whose patron saint is St. John the Baptist, as you know. Here’s what I can tell you as gleaned from an article on venezianews: “The exhibition…reunites some of the best interdisciplinary artists of Puerto Rico… Around the monumental sculpture ‘San Juan Bautista,’ potent symbol of the capital, San Juan, actions, works and performances come to life, incorporating the complexity and the resilience of the Puerto Rican spirit, confronting at the same time the persistent heritage of colonialism and urgent questions of urban injustice.”

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):

Translation: “Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence.” He would never make it at the Biennale.

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.

After only two weeks he is beginning to fit right into the neighborhood. I’ve already come to like this little dude. Doesn’t bother anybody, doesn’t need anything.

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.

Remembering the little girl he had a crush on in 4th grade.

Trying to come up with a system for knowing which contact lens goes in which eye.

It’s like living with a floating room full of masks from Oceania.

Come to Venice, they said. You’ll have so much fun, they said.

Has just missed the next-to-last vaporetto to Sant’ Erasmo and has to wait an hour for the next one. Good thing he’s not hungry. And doesn’t have to go to the bathroom. And isn’t cold. Wishes he’d brought something to read.

St. John on the boat got lots of faces but they only gave her part of one. It’s pretty cool that she’s got those independent eyes, though, like a chameleon.

There have been boats at the Biennale before now. The water is evidently an element that helps some projects seem more interesting. Or important.

The Comoro Islands sent this in 2009. I can’t tell you anything about it, but then again, you know that if you have to ask, you shouldn’t be here.

In 2013, a boat overloaded with desperate migrants capsized on its way from Libya to Italy. “Migrants, hundreds dead” is the headline on the borrowed newspaper that reported the tragedy off the coast of Lampedusa in which 360 persons drowned. How audaciously droll to remind people of the catastrophe in such a blithe and child-like way. (uncredited photo)

Vik Muniz’s floating installation Lampedusa was launched during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The article 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.

These objects are occasionally left behind, and Muniz’s has been here for nine years now. No idea who is paying mooring fees at the “Vento di Venezia” marina, or why. If its purpose was polemical it has lost whatever value it might have had; migrants keep drowning.

One critic explained that “Vik Muniz employs his traditional use of unlikely materials and scale manipulation to generate wonder from predictability. Contextualized in the naval environment of Venice, ‘Lampedusa’ is … built to scale of one of the town’s traditional vaporettos.”

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.

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