Corpora in Si(gh)te

Venice – where keeping the heritage equals to being backwards, people are not helpful and just making hard things for you.

This is a personal account of my first impressions here, and my second trip to Italy in general. I’m impressed – but not positively. The place reminds me of a circus built of facades, everyone very intent on not breaking their historic character. But behind all this, it’s like being in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, a place long abandoned, with hidden threats, obstacles looming all over.

The last time I was asked for an official ID at a cybercafe was in Shanghai, China last year. But I thought – yes, this is a police state and they spend all the effort to monitor everyone, even through the internet. I didn’t think that the same thing would happen to me in Europe, but it did, here.

Visiting the Giardini, where the Biennale pavilions are, looks like a park of a city abandoned, all the people have moved away from long ago. The buildings look megalomaniac but somehow too small, and are crumbling. The place is empty except for some schoolchildren exploring seemingly unsupervised space. And they find emptiness, trash blown by the wind, and the occasional excitement of throwing rocks at the rooftops so that the tiles drop and break on impact.

And it’s actually true – while there are people around during the day, it seems that practically no one is living here anymore. The deserted nature of the place is emphasized by the un-helpfulness of everyone here. Overpriced and low quality services, artificial obstacles put in your face all the time. Not something you would do to your neighbor or friend.

It seems they can afford being rude, as even despite open unfriendliness people just come and come. And I seem to be one of them, coming back in August to enhance the city’s image through taking part in their Biennale. Wonder why, though.

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