EPITAPH FOR THE POSTHUMOUS VENICE AGONY

Venice is not dead yet and it’s living only partially. There are few inhabitants, they walk alone the calli; many have already chosen the dry land, abandoning “The Stones of Venice” to the contemporary tourist who is hungry for pictures: the old Grand Tour traveller, enamoured by the stratification of the city built on the water turned into a lazy -and kind of careless-cruise passenger. Inside the body of this city, through the veins of its canals, behind the turned off windows, in the shady campielli, there is no more frenzied business by working people, no more fierceness of the political speeches, no more grace of the young lovers, no more footfall by the old men, no more mothers calling for their children playing in the streets.

The boondocks-city, hazy ghost of itself, is going toward the irretrievable liquefaction into the market, mere tourist destination, ephemeral merchandise, and the city as such is advertised, sold, worn out and it’s finally duplicated.

The identity of the city is drowning in the sewer of the modern globalized culture

When Venice will finally stop being a city and will be consecrated as a theme park of “Ancient Things” (an “Oldie”), its spirit will definitely be lost.

The multiple dimensions of the stratifying city and its narrative levels will be reduced to a flat postcard or a photo taken by an I-phone.

DEATH

We plan for Venice another possible future.

It is necessary to let the identity of the city survive and find new meanings.

If the only scenes we can imagine to give Venice a chance are an open-pit museum in a case, or the adjustment of the urban structures to the brand new shapes of the modern housing in the other case, probably our culture does not yet have the mind and tools to deal with this question.

With the list of possibilities we choose not to choose: we try to make Venice cross the tempor­­­al dimension and the limits of our unsuitable civilization.

So we imagine burying Venice, after surveying all the urban fabric and monuments. We offer a mercy killing for Venice and we force it to die for the moment to permit it to come back to life if the conditions are ever right.

ESCHATOLOGY

The city will be covered by a soil blanket that will change it into a system made of green islands; buildings -like old relics left to their fate and forgotten on purpose- could re-emerge only after the digging out. The new hills of Venice will be used as a park, the place of memory of an ancient and odd urban culture.

The current occupants of the city, about 60.000 persons, will emigrate toward a new settlement situated in a cross-over position in respect to the rail/driveway axes connecting the mainland and Venice.

The temporal dimension of the project is indefinite and it sets no limit for the possible development of the post mortem scenario.

The digging out will be possible only at due time: this will happen when our civilization will finally find the way and have the courage to treat Venice as a living thing.

If this would never happen, we could even forget Venice: it could ultimately sink into oblivion and disappear from the common memory -what a removal!- and its name could sound like the legendary El Dorado or the untraceable Atlantis.