Contra vientos y mareas: Venezia & Veniceland
Friday, 23 October 2020, 12.30 – 15.30
Webinar – Universidad de Barcelona
The cities, victims and executioners of urban marketing strategies, know that a locus is worth what it gives, it is an object of exchange and, therefore, it is for sale. Tourism is both a barrel of oil, whose price is growing rapidly, and a form of urban experience. It is affirmed as a practice of mass and day-to-day phenomenon that tends to recode the spatial, social and economic coordinates of the territories it crosses and runs over. Life in and from these places is profoundly transfigured to such an extent that, parallel to the malaise caused by the desertification of productive activities, local communities are progressively deprived of the possibility of exercising their right to the city. There comes a time when the voice of protest rises and the committees and associations that give life to a nascent movement of opposition to tourism begin to multiply, connecting geographies (Venice, Barcelona or New York) and creating solidarity networks and cartographies. Venice, pearl of the Adriatic, stands out in these cartographies, since, for decades, it has undergone processes of patrimonialization, museification and commercialization, whose effects have transformed the urban reality and the life of its inhabitants.
Taking as a starting point the exemplary case of Venice, this seminar aims to analyze the genesis and development of the touristification and commercialization of the city, as well as the role of artists, curatorial projects and its residents in the regeneration of the social and urban context and in claiming the right to the city.
Program
12.30-12.45 > Welcome and Introduction by Anita Orzes (University of Barcelona)
12.45-13.15 > Camilla Crosta (Indipentent Curator), Welcome to Venice: Some Reflections on Art in Public Spaces, Water Paths and on the Value of a Grassroots Approach to Culture
13.15-13.45 > Valentina Merzi (Artist), Venezia è bella ma non ci vivrei
13.45-14.00 > Coffe Break
14.00-15.00 > Giacomo-Maria Salerno (Sapienza Universidad de Roma), Touristification vs Right to the City. A Case Study from Venice
15.00-15.30 > Conclusions and closure of the seminar
Direction: Anita Orzes (Universidad de Barcelona)
Seminar organized in the framework of FPI contract (PRE2018-085848) as well as the research project Decentralized Modernities: Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlantic Axis during the Cold War (HAR2017-82755-P) of the University of Barcelona.
Image: Valentina Merzi, Venezia è bella ma non ci vivrei, 2010.
