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 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.
After my post on dredging (which was far too long ago, I apologize), I’m attempting a return with some answers to the question several readers put to me: What happens to the mud that is dredged from the canals?
Bear in mind that Venice has dredged its canals many times over the centuries and deposited the mud somewhere it could be useful. For example, the island of Sacca Sessola was created from 1860-1870 with the mud dredged from the area of Santa Marta during the deepening of the canals of the maritime zone. And it is far from being the only one.
Small digression: “Sacca” (saca in Venetian) is often used to identify such places, but don’t confuse it with sacco, which means “bag.” A sacca is defined as “an inlet or cove of the sea, lake, river, or more precisely the bottom of an inlet or gulf. In geography, the accumulation of brackish water, very shallow, that is formed in sandy areas that separate the branches of a delta, from the resurgence of seawater from the subsoil.” End of digression.
Murano, a natural grouping of lagoon islands, has been amplified with dredgings over the years; if you look at Google Maps (satellite view) you can easily locate Sacca Serenella, a sort of industrial zone to which no tourist would be lured. Murano has also grown on its northern perimeter by the addition of yet another island, mostly barren at the moment, where the Centro Sportivo San Mattia is located.
The cemetery island of San Michele has undergone quite an expansion over the past few years, thanks to dredgings from the city and environs. Puts a perfect, if slightly queasy, spin on the old “dust to dust” trope. I wonder if you could specify in your will that you want to be buried in the mud dug up from the canal nearest to your home.
When there is a large quantity of mud to be deposited, it is sprayed from enormous barges through high-powered tubes, specifically to form new barene (marshy islands). This process was quite a spectacle for a while during the construction of the “Vento di Venezia” marina at the island of the Certosa.
Unhappily, sometimes the mud is poison. I’m not picking on Murano, but canals near the glass furnaces are known to contain arsenic and a few other chemicals not conducive to health. The sediments along the lagoon edge by the Industrial Zone are loaded with heavy metals — pick your favorite, it will be there. Sometimes illegal clammers go there at night, sell the clams, they’re sold to restaurants, etc. You can imagine.
Because the provenance of the mud matters, there is a system by which it is analyzed and classified and, if necessary, treated to render it harmless. This is more than usually important if it’s being sold to farmers to enrich their fields. I haven’t researched the system(s), so please don’t ask me. The point is that they exist.
The mud of Venice. You probably wouldn’t call it poetic, but it’s just as important as the water.
The G20 are coming for dinner. And breakfast, and fancy fetes, and big meetings from July 7-11, and for days we’ve been given periodic updates on what this will entail for daily life.
For those who may not feel like knowing more than necessary, here are the basics (thank you, Wikipedia): The G20 is composed of most of the world’s largest economies, including both industrialized and developing nations. The group collectively accounts for around 90 percent of gross world product (GWP),[4] 75-80 percent of international trade,[A 1] two-thirds of the world’s population,[2] and roughly half the world’s land area.
Think: Economic Ministers and governors of central banks. Also think: Organized demonstrations protesting the many defects of the global economy, with protestors coming from far and also wide, at least some of whom are known to prefer violence. Each group will be assigned a specific area from which to express their views. They won’t be near the Arsenal, I think I can promise that.
This year it was Italy’s turn to play host, and considering that by the late 13th century Venice was the richest country in Europe, it seems pleasantly appropriate for the money masters to meet here. I doubt that was the organizers’ motivation, but it does fit. Although the decision was made in Rome, and not here, Venice may well have been seen as a city uniquely adapted to the control of movement by land or by water.
The city began planning all this last January (probably much earlier, actually), by means of at least ten separate committees. The basic idea was to keep the city in as normal a condition as possible with the help of 1500 extra police (Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, Polizia di Stato, etc.), including police divers ready for canal duty. The prefect made a big point of saying he could have just shut the city completely down, but wanted to show it as open and even welcoming. I hope that turns out to be true.
Some statistics: The eleven canals nearest the Arsenal were emptied of the boats that normally are moored there. These 450 vessels were temporarily transferred to the marinas at the Certosa island (“Vento di Venezia”) and Sant’ Elena Marina. I believe there is no cost for this to the owners, but there will certainly be some inconvenience in going to either place to get your boat.
The 62 delegations (size of each unknown) will be lodging in eight luxury hotels in the city. The extra police that have been brought in as reinforcements will be bunking on the mainland, if that interests you.
Covid swabs every 48 hours are guaranteed to everyone at the meeting, at points in the Arsenal and in the delegation hotels. Ambulances are on standby.
The yellow area is the “Security Zone,” accessible only to residents and shopowners who show their pass. At “D” you find the taxi station between San Zaccaria and the Arsenal is suspended, and at E and F the fuel station and boatyard by the church of San Pietro di Castello are suspended, seeing that they are within a few feet of the second water entrance to the Arsenal. No yachts will be permitted to tie up along the Riva degli Schiavoni.
The vaporetto stops closest to the meeting site (Arsenale, Bacini and Celestia) will be suspended. The Fondamente Nove are partially unavailable to traffic; one helpful notice explained to residents of the Lido that if they needed to go to the hospital, they would have to go to Murano, then proceed to the hospital by way of the Fondamente Nove stop.
Baffled by how this would work, I studied the vaporetto options and discovered Line #18 that runs from the Lido to the Murano stops, where you change for the 4.1. As if normal life here weren’t already sufficiently inconvenient, this line operates once an hour from 9:18 AM to 7:50 PM, with a break between 12:18-4:50 PM. I don’t know that I’d undertake the voyage except in case of direst need.
Navigation will be controlled according to this color-coded scheme, and that means everybody, up to and including you and your aging uncle who wants to take the motorboat out to go fishing.
Transport of merchandise will be forbidden between 8:00-10:00 AM and 4:00-6:00 PM. (See the red-orange zone on the map.) Restaurant owners have been advised to stock up early, in case there are any glitches.
Don’t imagine that you can somehow manage to cleverly do things your own way; there will be some 60 boats of the Guardia di Finanza out patrolling, as well as four helicopters. I appreciate the prefect’s assurances that normal life will continue, but I’m starting to wonder how many people are just going to decide to take a long weekend and go to the mountains.