La Biennale | Venice: I am not making this up

who says there’s nothing to do here

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.

Starting over

The triangular red notice-boards of the Biennale have returned to their ancestral homes in the neighborhood. Here’s an important one, front and center in via Garibaldi.

If there’s one term (among many) that has become fashionable around here this year it’s ripresa — recovery. (Not to be confused with “Recovery Plan,” which is exactly what Italians call the mega-component financial scheme that will somehow reassemble our dismembered economy. Does saying it in English give it some occult power? Wish I knew somebody I could ask.) I would have suggested “comeback,” like for some devastated boxer staggering back into the ring, but whatever you want to call it, everybody’s trying to get back to normal.

Over the past two weeks or so, there have been tiny but unmistakeable signs of life such as gradual lessening of curfew, gradual increase of shops and restaurants opening, etc. We still have to wear masks, though not everybody does, but the only thing missing from a cartoon version of life here right now is birds swooping around with little hearts floating upward.

So I’ve been enjoying the tiny signs — more every day — that belong to life as we used to know it. And many of them are connected to the imminent reopening of the Biennale on May 22 (canceled last year, along with its millions of euros from the municipal budget).

Being that our neighborhood is the epicenter of Biennale activity, of course I’d be seeing things such as enormous crates on barges with cranes being unloaded in the exhibition zone, unknown people wearing unusual clothes just standing on bridges looking around, a person here or there with lots of video or camera equipment, or the ticket booth for the vaporettos about to start selling tickets again, ever more individuals dressed in black with a lanyard and plastic-sleeved document around his/her neck. Press, I presume. More water taxis. Gondolas with people in them. I saw a woman today walking around with a big paper map of the city. Boy, that takes me back.

Let’s also notice the soundtrack: The scrapey clatter of rolling suitcases outside the window, the constant low rumble of motors everywhere. All you need is a barge with three cement mixers aboard trying to get somewhere against the tide and you’ll hear what I mean, but the noise from even smaller motors gets to be big, when there are enough of them. This is one part of the Sound of Venice I did NOT miss during quarantine. But here we are.

So generally speaking non-Venetians are returning to their Venice, and we are sliding back into ours, invisible again. We are all side by side, but we are not in the same city. I’ve commented elsewhere on these parallel tracks of life here that never meet, and so that’s a part of normal that is ineluctable.

Not only is the day after tomorrow Opening Day for the Biennale; the following Saturday will be the opening of the week-long Salone Nautico, or Boat Show, in the Arsenal. So bring on the people. I guess we’re ready.

I’ve really missed the yachts; I look them up online to see what they’re like inside. Monsters such as this are moored here, not for their voyagers (this babe costs 238,000 euros per week) but as the perfect venues for really important Opening Weekend parties. It — or perhaps Plan A? — will probably be back for the same reason at the end of August for the film festival.

This restaurant was created a year ago February in what was the only shoe store in via Garibaldi. As soon as lockdown hit, it closed up and has never opened since then until this week. Getting all spiffed up and ready for hungry art-lovers. I think basil plants instead of flowers is an outstanding idea. Also, they say green is the color of hope.

This Eastern European man is a staple at the entrance to the Giardini, playing the old favorites (including “My Way,” my oldest unfavorite, but also the tango music from “Scent of a Woman”) to a modest recorded accompaniment. He had disappeared for a year, because who was around to give him money? The fact that he’s back is a huge sign of better things on the way.

Shapeless whimsy is seeking fame and fortune — the Biennale’s back and boy, is Venice glad.

You start with a plinth of some sort and work up. No way of guessing what might be due to be put here, we’ll just have to wait and be surprised.

The meaning of this will be revealed in due course, though perhaps not by me. At the moment, it’s sitting there in its perfect shape, though its relevance to “How will we live together?” is not immediately evident.

I have no way of knowing whether bags of mulch are a work of art — it’s a little hard to know where to look in these areas or what to appreciate. So I’ll appreciate the mulch.

One entirely unexpected discovery, beyond the fields of the Biennale, was a collateral effect of the city’s revival: The opening of the church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti to the public. I have only ever seen this church open for funerals, not infrequently because it was built in 1634 as part of the city hospital. (Hospitals and funerals are unfortunate companions.) We came upon this on a random afternoon wander, and seized the chance to see the church without mourners and memorial wreaths.

The church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti is inserted into the city hospital, and is usually shut up tight, as you see here. (Foto: Abxbay on Wikipedia).

Enter the church and this is what you discover is filling the space over the front door. Meet Alvise Mocenigo (known in Italian as Luigi Leonardo Mocenigo), Admiral of the Venetian navy in the 25-year War of Candia during 1648-51 and 1653-4.

You already have grasped that he was a Capitano da Mar because of his very particular hat, and his baton of command. He defeated the perennial Turkish foe at Paros and Naxos, but his qualities as a commander and as a man were evidently so remarkable that when he died even the Turks bedecked their ships with tokens of mourning for their worthy adversary.

The Battle of Naxos. That rearing horse must have been the sculptor’s absolutely favorite part of the whole thing. The obelisks bear medallions representing the four medals struck in Crete to commemorate Mocenigo’s victories (Civica, Rostrale, Murale, Graminea. This will not be on the final exam.)

So modern art brings tourists, which leads to opening some spaces to lovers of old art. I might like this new normal.