edited by Fabio Ranzolin e Viviana Gravano
I wonder if Lana Del Rey was thinking of Invisible Cities when she wrote: «Oh God, miss you on my lips. It’s me, your little Venice bitch» [1]. Venezia is an ideal stage to begin and end many stories. As a backdrop to most of my experiences, travels, ambitions, feelings, and attachments, it seems that Venezia is always there. The city of the Western carnival par excellence. As Italo Calvino wrote in 1972: «- Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased, – Polo said. – Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venezia all at once if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it little by little» (Calvino 1972, p. 40). Venezia and all the other “Venices” reproduce a certain corporeality, as if they were the echo of a nostalgic romantic relationship never quite finished.
When thinking about Venezia, one always enters into a relationship with its perennial state of slow subsidence. It is a space that corrodes and sinks because of the same system that built its dazzling, glassy beauty. A lagoon city built through a strongly imperial and colonial apparatus of dominance; from speculations, market profits, and its ability to be appearance, fantasy, exhibition. Venezia is one of those apparatuses in a constant state of performance: an iconographic mirage; reverberations of noble palaces on polluted waters; wealth submerged in slime; a city attacked first by the plague and now by epidemics of “hit-and-run” tourism. Venezia is betrayed kingdoms, financial lucre, entertainment culture, Venetian independence glories, hidden kisses among the calli at night, “ombre and ombrette” [2]. It is a crumbling city with the backbone of Narcissus, mellifluous nostalgia on a postcard by now without any luster, an evening at Ai Biliardi vanished [3], a vacation at the Lido evaporated, and a Paradiso Perduto [4] definitively shattered like the seabed after the large ships that for years crossed the Giudecca Canal. By now, the city of Venezia is the ugly original of a series of reproductions – so many reproductions – on merchandising and on discursive romantic-consumerist desirability, weekend packages, social events, institutions of over-powering oligarchies, fashion foundations, memories of orgies in the palaces, arrogant gentrification, hepatitis A in the water, glitter-filled masks to buy in the summer, and Murano glass manufactured in the new silk road of economic and abstractive dominance.
In short, literally, a so-called “open-air museum.”
In the “most splendid drawing room in Europe,” Piazza San Marco, jewelry shops, cafes, pigeons, and unlicensed street carts erode the pockets of masses of tourists shaped like the pieces of marble, ivory, and stones stolen through colonial conduct during the crusades. The treasures of Venezia have always been traversable bodies, invaded, deceived, and trampled by relocated triumphal quadrigae. There is an interesting popular anecdote regarding the prestigious Pala d’oro preserved in the presbytery of Basilica di San Marco. The artifact is an altarpiece in gold, enamels, pearls, silver, and finely crafted precious stones coming from the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. The Pala is among the most incredible pinnacles of Byzantine Art. In 1797, with the fall of the Republic of Venice, the mercantile, colonial, and symbolic dominance of the city was no longer strong. The nobility had to proclaim the surrender of the city to Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops, who, as is still the custom for dominant states, appropriated a whole portion of material culture previously bought, commissioned, and stolen over the centuries by the church and the local aristocracy. A passing of the torch, perhaps? The Napoleonic spoliation, however, did not take the precious Pala d’oro due to a linguistic misunderstanding: between anecdote and speculative fable, it is thought that Napoleon did not understand what the Venetians told him. In the Venetian dialect, the word “vero” has a dual meaning and use: it means both “glass” and “true”. In front of the artwork, the Emperor was told that the artifact “xe vero” (it is true) to confirm its authenticity, but Napoleon, misconstruing the meaning of the phrase, understood instead that it was a glass artifact, therefore of low value, and for that reason it was discarded among the goods to be seized. Some versions claim the opposite: that the local people, to defend the work, told the Emperor it was glass, playing on this dual meaning of the language.
Historical veracity is not my trade, but I find this popular anecdote fitting to describe the process of display: the act of showing, making visible, producing fiction and/or entertainment, narratives, epistemic processes, corrective practices, arranging aesthetics, and organizing storytelling. Although today we use the word almost exclusively to indicate electronic screens, the term “display” refers to the act (or result) of exposing something, in an organized and attractive way, to sensory perception. Display has, therefore, a proximity to scenography, rituality, and manifestation. Musealization, showcases, exhibition, isolation, and valorization. But in behavioral terms, display can mean manifestations of affection (public display of affection), attracting partner(s) (courtship display), or frightening and attacking rivals (display of force; military display). Display is a concept that creates crisis, conflict, and superstructure, and it has been chosen as the theme for this new issue of the magazine. What role does the body have in the display? What politics are put into play by the act of showing or making showable?
Thinking about the concept of display, this assonance between truth (vero) and glass (vero) has something emblematic about it.
Non xe vero? (Is it not true/glass?)
In Western cultures, to define something as true, it is necessary to analyze and catalog evidence, repetitions, and reliable responses of a given phenomenon (or a series of phenomena). In short, it is finding a synthetic answer to the production of interpretations and montages. Glass, instead, is a plastic material, 100% recyclable, fragile or unbreakable, which can vary in color. Glass, in architecture and especially in design, is often placed as a limit: it is a barrier, a window, or a container, used to let light pass or to see what is beyond the material. Today, in museums, for example, glass is a museographic tool that guarantees the integrity of the object, serving to distance and protect it from the context, but it is also useful to symbolically emphasize its uniqueness, preciousness, and/or authenticity. Museum glass, in the best cases, is so refined that it has no reflections, is apparently invisible, and constructs a semantics – or simply deludes visual perception – into believing that between us and the work there is nothing but the truth. Since it is particularly protruding, I often happen to bump my nose against it.
What is “vero” is, therefore, a display: a simulating, polysemic, complex apparatus with a bizarre relationship with transparency. Displays are processes of production, archiving, and technologies; they are perceptual, affective, cognitive, libidinal, dominant, or relational potentialities.
Precisely because of its proposal of itself as faithful in perennial cloning, the lagoon city — a mirror that craves simulations and anecdotes, from artificial truth to original glass — is a meta-metaphor for the theme of display. Starting the paragraph with Venezia, with its «flattering and ambiguous beauty – that city half fairy tale and half snare» (Mann, 1991, p. 52), this issue of the magazine asks you to bring back to the surface the debris that emerges with the low tide: there is a certain stench of freschìn [5] in these displays.
Theme: display, /di’splɛi/, [from (to) display “to show, exhibit”, late Lat. displicare “to unfold, develop”], used in Italian as masculine – [device used for the visualization of images and imaginaries]. Display, therefore, is to be understood as process, tool, and practice.
To whom it is addressed: to both fierce and tender people, provided that in both cases they have a critical and personal point of view.
Fields: display can include multiple fields of inquiry and politics: gender studies, visual cultures, performance studies, queer, cultural studies, museology, porn studies, affectivity, post-decolonial studies, genealogies, sound studies, iconology, alternative ecologies, crip studies, archaeology, animal studies, contemporary arts, archival practices, etc…
Modalities: write to us about reflections, clues, dreams, memories, complaints, fantasies, and vices. Have a generous narcissism. Write to us in an embodied way. We do not look for truth; we look, instead, for formulas of crisis, analysis, deconstruction, reconstruction, speculation, and creation of the display you have chosen. Viviana and I love the re-reading of things, especially if undue. We seek contributions that are also tools for other studies, thoughts, and imaginaries. We would like an issue that produces choral networks and not solos. Solipsism, self-referentialism, and exclusive onanism, in fact, bore us. Given the lack of payment, we hope for a contribution that you enjoyed creating. Have rigor only for your ideas and emotions; however, styles (linguistic, analytical, empirical) of your own originality are appreciated. As is customary for Roots&Routes, you can send us poems, texts, photo albums, artistic creations, or other contributions and formats.
Notes
[1] “Venice Bitch” by Lana Del Rey (lyrics and interpretation), 18.09.2028, second single from the sixth album Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019).
[2] In Venetian dialect, the word “ombra” (or its diminutive “ombretta”) is the popular expression to indicate a small glass of cheap wine (traditionally 100 ml).
[3] “Ai Biliardi” was one of the most famous ARCI circles and underground music clubs in Venezia. The venue was located in the Cannaregio district, specifically along the Fondamenta de la Sensa. Permanently closed in 2019 due to administrative irregularities and soundproofing problems.
[4] “Il Paradiso Perduto” is one of the most famous and historical taverns in Venezia. It is located in the Cannaregio district, along the famous Fondamenta de la Misericordia.
[5] “Freschìn”, or “freschino”, is a term known throughout almost all of Northern Italy. Used mainly to indicate the smell of poorly washed dishes, of fish that is not very fresh, of the ditch, of the canals of Venezia, and especially of dishes or objects that have been in contact with eggs.
References
Calvino I., Le città invisibili, Letteratura italiana Einaudi, Torino 1972.
Mann T., La morte a Venezia, (1912), I CLASSICI Feltrinelli, Milano 1991.