Some thoughts on the in-between-ness of Venice

Venice has long been attributed with a particularly in-between-like quality. Perhaps most consistently, it has been described as a gateway, or portal between East and West, inextricably linking European and Islamic worlds through trade and commerce at least since the 8th century. Venice might not have developed from a fishing village into the powerful maritime republic it became, had it not been for its strategic middle position in the trade routes importing profitable luxury goods from the East into Europe. 

As a thoroughfare for religious pilgrims, eighteenth and nineteenth-century scholars and aristocrats undertaking the 'Grand Tour' of Europe, and the vast throngs of tourists it attracts today, it has formed a temporary home to vast numbers of travellers. The travellers, of course, also form this Venice, this liminal place of heightened experience - this carneval or 'backpacking experience' - suspended temporarily in interregnum between the two bookends of routine, familiarity, home and the working year.

The more loquacious of them (from Lord Byron, Goethe, Proust to the Lonely Planet, and of course Art Review/Art Forum/Art Monthly, and one could add to the list Geoff Dyer's recent sharp observation of the jaded biennale tourist, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), have penned myriad accounts in which a thousand Venices unfold in multiple configurations of the same story. As Erica Jong said about it, it is the 'city of mirrors, the city of mirages'.

Like any city, its in-between-ness continues beyond the specificities of trade economies and histories; a shifting identity that transmutes and is subject to the vagaries of each moment-by-moment as throngs of people move through it and as it passes through seasons and times of day.  Suspended betwixt and between, Piazza St Marco can at any one time take on a multitude of characteristics: early in the morning, during a period of 'acqua alta', it is an expanse of quiet water reflecting the surrounding architecture; mid-weekend, at mid-day, it bristles with the frenetic agendas of camera-wielding tourists. Yesterday as I passed through, it had become a stage set for a wedding shoot; it was unclear to me whether the wedding was real, or an elaborate staging, yet another layer in the multiple layers of representation comprising this city.

Below are a few images of various entrances and portals, found on my rambles through the city.

The eighteenth-century doorway of the Palazzo Fondazione Claudio Buzziol, the venue in which Francis Upritchard's work is exhibited

 
 
 Fabrice Gygi's crystal-like curtain hanging in the entrance to the off-site Swiss pavilion

 

Liam Gillick's hanging strips of soft coloured plastic at the German pavilion

A twisted dream-like evocation of 'door' in Ingmar Dragset's Nordic pavilion

 
 

A doorway in the Icelandic pavilion, leading onto sunlight and water beyond
 

Comments

I just found your blog on google.

As a Brazilian Venezia's admirer, I will be visiting this blog very often.

Congrats,
Rafael Padilla