A Life in Ruins: Venice's elegant decay and what lies behind it

A Life in Ruins:

Venice’s elegant decay and what lies behind it Vasiliki Souti

Crumbling stucco, rusty domes and mouldy shutters. I first visited Venice two years ago and this image of the city as a dilapidating wonderland is a memento that has vividly stayed with me. When I started thinking about the current piece of research, therefore, I viewed it as an opportunity to revisit this memory and further explore how the downward-dragging, corrosive power of time endows Venice with its widely praised beauty. After the severe flooding, or “acqua alta”, of the 12th of November and the eventful days that followed, however, conversations with both locals and visitors gave me the opportunity to see Venice’s elegant decay in a different light through understanding what living in the city really means.

The beauty of decay is actually not a topic I decided to analyse for the first time. My research on the aesthetic and social value of ruins dates back to January 2019, when I wrote an essay called “Decay as a force of life: how ruins and aged bodies need not signal decline”. After a long discourse on social and architectural approaches towards decay, I was led to the conclusion that befriending and appreciating the destructive effects of time could result in a better understanding of life itself, and thus more satisfaction in our living experience.

Therefore, when I travelled to Venice on the 24th of October 2019, I set off with a romantic notion of it as a city that was poetically sinking. In its buildings I could see the rise and fall of an empire, which had been constructed on deserted marshlands 1100 years ago, had reached the peak of its power 6 centuries later and was now crumbling back into the water; a perfect example of nature claiming back what rightfully belongs to it. During the next days I spent time recording and photographing blackening facades, rusty anchor plates, untamed weeds, cracked walls and their exposed brickwork (see appendix). Diderot’s words echoed in my head: “The ideas ruins evoke in me are Figure 1: The colours of Venice. grand. Everything comes to nothing, everything perishes, everything passes, only the world remains, only time endures.” (Diderot, 1767, cited in Dillon, 2014:16) Diderot’s quote became even more relevant when, during the first week of November, a temporary bridge was constructed following an old tradition in order to connect Venice with the cemetery island of San Michele. Throughout the 10 days during which the bridge stayed open, the cemetery lay at the heart of life in Venice, with more Venetians crossing the bridge each day to pay tribute to the dead. When I arrived on the island, I was faced with an area of approximately 176000 m2, covered with graves as far as the eye could see. Crossing the bridge back to the city, and strongly moved by the gloomy atmosphere, it appeared to me that there was an uncanny association between Venice and death.

The day after, I headed to the IUAV University library in order to explore this observation further. I soon realised that death and Venice, death in Venice and the death of Venice were topics that numerous artists had been interested in through the years. It was during the decade that followed the catastrophic acqua alta (or Aquagranda) of 1966 that this tendency became even more prominent, while debates were raging about what was to become of the city (Plant, 2003). Giorgio Lotti’s 1970 photography collection “Venezia Muore” (Venice is dying) showcased the devastating effects of acqua alta on Venice’s architecture and the lives of its inhabitants. In 1977, Giuseppe Santomaso created a suite of paintings called “letters to Palladio” which captured the city’s fragility, as if Santomaso was trying to communicate to Palladio how his once imposing structures would ultimately fall into demise (Plant, 2003).

This macabre approach towards Venice became even more prominent in the films produced during that time. 1970 saw the release of “Anonymous Venetian”, where the heroine is reunited with her estranged husband, who is dying from an incurable illness. In 1971, a film based on Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella “Death in Venice”, was released, followed by an homonymous opera adaptation by Benjamin Britten in 1973. In 1973, the horror film “Don’t look now’’ was also released, revolving around the story of a couple in grief that travels to Venice after the sudden loss of their daughter. The city’s dying architectural environment was indeed a good place for a cinematographic death, but this dark portrayal of Venice was not something I was accustomed to. It seemed as if in the eyes of these artists Venice could turn from a scenic, romantic destination to an eerie wasteland.

When on the 10th of November I experienced the first acqua alta of the year, the stereotype of Venice the romantic city started to collapse before my eyes too. As I was getting to know the true side of Venice, I became more and more interested in discussing the reality of life in “La Serenissima” with Venetians themselves.

My wish soon came true during Luna Salazar’s workshop at the British Pavilion. The workshop’s aim was to create a space for a group of Venetian ladies to reflect on Cathy Wilkes’ exhibition and form their own artistic responses. While creating a collage out of old family pictures, one of the ladies started recounting the story of her move to Venice from Rome 37 years ago. She told me about the difficulties she had to face before she became part of the community, at the start being openly treated as an outsider. We then went on to talk about the city’s architecture and all the regulations you have to abide by if you want to make any alteration to your house, from the structure and the facade to the colour of the curtains and shutters. When discussing about decay in the city’s architectural environment, she said:

Figure 2: Letter to Palladio No. 6 (Santomaso, 1977).

Figure 3: Danger, Angels Dropping: one of the most reproduced images from Lotti’s (1970) collection.

“But Venice is beautiful like this, if it was too new it would look like Disneyland.”

In a distant corner of the room, another lady was putting together a composition out of natural objects she had amassed during her travels. She didn’t see herself as the artist but as the curator of the artwork. She told me it was not her, but nature that had sculpted these materials into their beautiful shapes and forms.

“For me this is exactly what happens in Venice” I answered. “It is nature that sculpts the walls, that changes

the colours of the wood, that gives the city its beauty.”

“The walls, the old doors, the aged iron, they’re beautiful, yes! In Venice you see it because everything is crumbling. If you go to Burano everything is polished, shiny. I don’t like it. I like things that are a bit chipped, a bit decadent.. And you can come across some wonderful doors. Those colours.. Truly, I took loads of pictures for my watercolour paintings.”

We all left the Biennale with many discussions to reflect upon and many thoughts to document. Everyone that was in Venice that night, though, soon found out that there were more surprises in store. On my way home the streets were starting to flood, acqua alta already being by then an everyday phenomenon. The water, however, kept rising until it reached 187 cm above sea level, in the worst acqua alta incident the city had seen since 1966. We spent half of the night without electricity and with water up to our ankles, and the other half sweeping the water out of our apartment.

Figure 4: Damaged furniture and appliances after the acqua alta of November 12.

The day after, the city resembled a post-apocalyptic scene. You could see whole households on the streets: mountains of ruined electrical appliances, piles of soaked books, canals overflowing with debris. All the stores were closed, their owners counting damages, and supermarkets were missing even the essentials like water, milk and bread. Public transport was underperforming and unreliable, as some vaporetto stops were deemed too damaged to operate. When some days later we had the opportunity to meet with the participants from Luna’s workshop once again, we spent the evening talking about the scale of the damages and the Venetians’ response to it. There was a lot of frustration with the state, especially around MOSE, a project conceived decades ago to solve the issue of acqua alta, whose completion, nevertheless, has been hindered by many obstacles including corruption. Despite all the problems we had been analysing for hours, as we were saying goodbye, one of them concluded: “This is Venice. It has its difficulties but for us it’s paradise. We wouldn’t change it for any place in the world.” They all agreed.

Towards the end of my stay in Venice, I had the chance to attend a tour of the New Zealand Pavilion given by the artist, Dane Mitchell. He was representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale 2019 with “Post Hoc”, a list of all things obsolete, such as lost objects, notions and procedures (Mitchell, 2019). The list has more than two million entries, the names of which, throughout this year’s Biennale, were recorded in one room, printed in another and ultimately broadcast through a series of fake trees which were “planted” throughout the city. When asked about whether he was influenced by the current situation in Venice he answered: “I was thinking about this aspect of Venice as a kind of sinking city, a vanishing place - it’s a frightening prospect. So there’s the possibility of imagining Venice being on one of these lists eventually.”

Figure 5: At the New Zealand Pavilion, one of the real trees collapsed onto three nearby buildings due to the flooding.

Ironically, Dane Mitchell’s fake tree (left) survived.

But for him, obsolescence is not in every case a negative outcome: “The present and the future are only possible through

obsolescence or through a vanishing. Evolution is only possible through extinction.”

Later during the same encounter, when talking more specifically about the issues Venice is facing, Dr Stephen Turner, a co-author of the exhibition’s catalogue, pointed out that Venetians should embrace water as a governing power of their city instead of trying to restrain it. This statement is very appropriate when it comes to the city’s politics and the unsuccessful, to this day, attempt to tame the sea through the project of MOSE. In their everyday reality, however, Venetians have no other choice but to allow the sea to control their lives and the activities that take place in it. This is what makes Venice a rare example of a city, which is here to constantly remind us that humans are not almighty and that nature will persevere in defiance of all man-made interventions.

By the end of the trip, the dilapidating architecture of Venice continued to mesmerise me as much as it did the very first time I saw it. Now, however, in its crumbling walls I could not only see beauty, but the long history of a people that had to learn and is still learning how to coexist with nature. Thus, acknowledging the inherent power and beauty of nature, Venetians also accept and appreciate the effects that the passage of time has had on their homeland. In the end, I realised that behind the stereotype of historical, romantic Venice lies a place that has much more to teach us about real life and nature than our shiny cities, where every imperfection is wiped out as soon as it appears. Whether in the years to come it vanishes or not, Venice will always be a reminder that regardless of human ambitions to subdue our planet’s power, it is nature that will always have the final say.

Bibliography Dillon, B. (2014). Ruin lust. London: Tate Publishing.

Lotti, G. (1970). Pericolo Caduta Angeli - Venezia Muore. [Photograph] Available at: https://cutt.ly/yriewwH [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

Mitchell, D. (2019). Post Hoc. Milan: Mousse Publishing.

Plant, M. (2003). Venice, fragile city: 1797-1997. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Santomaso, G. (1977). Letter to Palladio No. 6 (Lettera a Palladio n. 6). [Oil on canvas, 161.8 x 130.4 cm] Available at: https://cutt.ly/yriw3ll [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

blackening stone

crumbling stucco

Appendix observed signs of decay in Venice, categorised

water stains

untamed vegetation

graffiti

rusty metal

rusty ancor plates

aged wood