Episode 1: Collaboration in the Venetian Lagoon

Venice

9 Apr

Season 1: Venice

Episode 1: Collaboration in the Venetian Lagoon with Alice Ongaro Sartori

*Independent curator Alice Ongaro Sartori develops site-specific projects with artists in the Venetian Lagoon that focus on how art, nature and the public sphere intersect.*

Independent curator Alice Ongaro Sartori collaborates with artists across the archipelago in the Venetian lagoon to develop site specific projects that focus on how art, ecology and the public sphere intersect.

We met when I visited the Venice Biennale Architecturra last year. I was in Venice as one of five creative directors of the Australia Pavilion 2023 exhibition unsettling Queenstown.

In this first episode we cover:

TBA21s Ocean Space, an arts foundation advocating for ocean literacy through art. With an international focus, it has found its home in Venice, and tries to find a balance between the global and local by working with Veneto artists, alongside those further afield,
examples of site-specific arts projects in the lagoon; such as The Garden of the Unaccompanied Children and the Floating Cinema (people came together in 300+ gondolas in the lagoon to watch films),
the importance of collaboration in Alice’s practice and how she values female power,
how fascist imagery from the 1960s and 70s can be seen in popular culture today,
and new African fiction being published by Venice-based publisher Wetlands.

Whether you are interested in how artists and curators respond to the social, political and environmental tensions within a place, or you are fascinated by the beauty and mythology of Venice, this episode promises to reveal another layer of Venice that can only be experienced by immersing yourself in the lagoon.

Tune in to hear how the islands in the Venetian lagoon influence the psyche and the artistic imagination.

Biography

Alice is an independent curator and researcher based in Venice, interested in how art and the moving image intersect with ecology and the psychology of society. Until 2022 she was co-curator of the independent project MICROCLIMA and was part of the curatorial team of the Floating Cinema (edition I, II, III), in Venice. Until 2021 she led the Public Program of Ocean Space (TBA21-Academy), a center for exhibitions, research and public programs catalyzing ocean literacy and advocacy through the arts. Alice has collaborated as curatorial assistant with The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and as Consultant for Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. She is now a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg, working on her thesis "Flashback Fascism: Artists’ Books, Collages, and Other Works on Paper in 1960s and 1970s Italy."

Transcript

Sarah Rhodes: My name is Sarah Rhodes, an artist based in Tasmania. I met with independent curator, Alice Ongaro Sartori to record this podcast, Art Destinations, when I visited the Venice Biennale Architettura last year as one of the five creative directors of the Australia Pavilion's Unsettling Queenstown exhibition. I met Alice in her home on the island of Giudecca, a short vaporetto ride north of Venice Island. Alice collaborates with artists across the archipelago in the Venetian Lagoon to develop projects that respond to the natural world, art and politics. Art Destinations will be published fortnightly and each season will focus on one place. The first season explores Venice and aims to provide an understanding of the layer tourists rarely see.

SR: Please take a minute to sign up to the email newsletter on the website artdestinations.org and follow this podcast on your hosting platform so you don't miss an episode. Alice gives us a rare insight into the Venetian Lagoon through the projects she has been involved with including the public program at TBA21's Ocean Space, Microclima's Floating Cinema, and her most recent project, working with African fiction writers-in-residence for the Venice-based publishing house, Wetlands. We learn about her secret weapon, the power of collaboration, and about her PhD research on fascist imagery of the 1960s and '70s. While each of these components sound unrelated, it is quite remarkable how one person weaves the threads to find a synchronicity between them. Hello Alice, it's wonderful to have you here today.

Alice Ongaro Sartori: Thank you so much for having me here.

SR: Very exciting for us. You ran the public program at Ocean Space for the last few years. What did that involve?

AOS: Ocean Space is a center for catalyzing ocean literacy and advocacy based in Venice in a beautiful, reconsecrated church, the Church of San Lorenzo, which has an incredible story. It's a church that is allegedly the tomb of Marco Polo. It has been deconsecrated for more than 150 years. It was closed, actually to the public before Ocean Space arrived. And Ocean Space is this beautiful center for ocean literacy and advocacy and imagination. That is the home of a international art foundation called TBA21-Academy. That after 10 years of nomadic research and journeys around the oceans, found a place in Venice. And what they do, they commission to artists long-term researches about the oceans or in general, also, I would say, water epistemologies, but collaborating in a multidisciplinary way. So it's not only an exhibition space.

AOS: But also a research centre for students and researchers from different fields. And I started to work there in 2019 when Ocean Space actually opened to the public after a long time of renovation and restoration because the Foundation decided to restore this huge beautiful church that was abandoned before. And I started to work there and kind of my role grew a little bit spontaneously and naturally as a public program coordinator and curator of some sections of it, especially trying to connect the international soul of the Foundation with the more specific and delicate also ecosystem of targets that the local community has here in Venice.

AOS: So try a little bit to connect also discourse related to the oceans, which is of course a huge topic and to fit it into a smaller but really rich and complex ecosystem like the Venetian Lagoon. So, yes, I was a little bit, I had this role of trying to have this sensitivity of making sense of these two dimensions. And yes, I worked there for three years until 2021. That was a really great experience for me also because the idea of curating projects that are not necessarily within a traditional exhibition format really triggers my imagination.

SR: I've got a few questions from that. So first of all, it seems as though ocean space, the concept, would have been made especially for Venice, but it actually just found its home in Venice. So it's kind of quite potent that it is in Venice. So how does the lagoon and the issues in the local community and artists work with Ocean Space? Like how... 'Cause you're working with international artists as well, how do they kind of find a relationship between the two?

AOS: It's an interesting question and it's a pivotal point, also, of the programming they do and I think it's a successful result what they are achieving and it's developing year by year. Venice has these two currents, let's say. There is always this tension between the so-called foreigners, so the international crowd coming for the Biennale, coming for exhibiting in this beautiful venue, and on the other side there is the Venice or like Venezia that is made of inhabitants and people living here besides the Biennale time frame. But the interesting thing is that Ocean Space embodies what is actually necessary to do in Venice, is that you cannot deny one of these two parts. So you cannot deny the tourism, you cannot deny the big production of shows, you cannot deny the influences of the international sphere.

AOS: At the same time, you cannot deny the necessities, the needs of the inhabitants. And so what they do is that for sure they have international names and international artists coming, but the serious relationships of the local and the international actually happen in moments of encounters, dialogues, talks, outdoor activities, many events that are also part of the public program now, because doing that is also a matter of encounters and exchange. And I think it's really nice to see it in a concrete way in the place.

SR: Now you talk a little bit about bringing the art outside the institution and you've been speaking a little bit about site specific art or I guess it's the gatekeepers in many ways as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?

AOS: Yes, yes, absolutely. That's my passion to, [laughter] actually break the rules of the, so-called White Cube or of the traditional exhibition space. Seven years ago I started to work with the project Microclima with Paolo Rosso. Now we don't work together anymore, but we used to work for many years together and with this beautiful research based and independent project, is all about contemporary art, but not necessarily only artists, but let's say how art intersect with ecology and the public sphere primarily based at that time in a beautiful, late 19th century orangery greenhouse at the beginning of the Giardini of Biennale and Microclima was based in this incredible space. It was not meant to be an exhibition or a cultural space. Actually it was built in 1894. It was the first structure ever built for the Biennale of Venice.

AOS: It was conceived as the orangery that was supposed to keep the tropical plants designated to the national pavilion warm. And then actually after couple of decades, it became a sort of stockroom for gardeners. So it was really a place for the gardens. And then this place in the 1950s became very, very abandoned. It was so beautiful, but also so decadent until 2007, '08, it was abandoned, destroyed. You could not even enter this beautiful public space. And then the municipality decided to restore it. And Paolo decided to introduce himself to the organization that was then running the greenhouse as a cafe and a flower shop suggesting to create public events because it was the perfect space a public garden with this beautiful glass house was actually meant to be an place for encounters. So then Microclima, started a bit like that.

AOS: And then we, for example, to mention a project we did together in 2017, if I remember correctly, was called The Playground Project, the Garden of the Unaccompanied Children, and was a project that we did in collaboration and co-curated with the Kunsthalle Zürich. So it came out of a bigger research project related to anarchical spontaneous forms of playgrounds in public spaces curated by Gabriela Bulkater that she did this research that went through from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s. An we really loved this idea of observing natural, spontaneous ways of playing with the urban and natural context and actually seeing kids and not only kids, also adults becoming designers of their own public spaces. So this idea of like reflecting upon public spaces through a very serious action for me, which is the game. Game is very serious in a pedagogical way.

AOS: There are so many things you learn about roles and rules and breaking rules and the context through the act of playing. So we actually installed, a series of events, games, related to ecology in a garden next to the greenhouse that is closed, also today is closed. And the sad thing is that nobody knows it's a public space. So me and Paolo were wondering why this space is closed, why the gate is so destroyed and ugly and just yeah abandoned, not only physically, but also emotionally, from people, from the municipality for sure. And, so yeah, we started this project, the Garden of the Unaccompanied Children, also with, collective of our friends called the Limpresari. We created a theater scene. And on the sonography of this theater outdoor, we printed the exhibitions with famous examples of architects who actually played a lot with kids and student in public spaces in the 1970s.

AOS: And then we started to do these actions that were of course trying to push the boundaries between what you can legally do and what you can't, and to question, why am I supposed to not to enter a public space? How to rise awareness of our surroundings through a very candid action and, which is the action of playing. So yeah, we did that for example, that was really, really, thrilling and touching as well. Moving, sorry, it's moving because, to see actually how mesmerized and surprised people of the neighborhood were, when they were discovering about this garden that was just like, next to them, was really nice, was really powerful. And together with some Swedish architects at the end of the exhibition, we created a movable bridge that was supposed... It was basically, composed by different blocks. We put them together and then we created a bridge to overcome the gate that the municipality was keeping closed. So we entered, we played, we made a party. There were families, there were musicians, there were... So, yeah, it was a lovely way to re-appropriate a public space, as said in a candidate, but intelligent, in my opinion way.

SR: So was there an outcome from that? Did the municipality take anything on board, or was it more just a different way of the residents seeing the space?

AOS: Municipality, didn't really help actually. Probably we created them more problems than other things. The inhabitants, of course, the neighbor was absolutely in love with it, but also people coming for the Biennale, people like families that were passing by, tourists and Biennale visitors and local families. It was really like a mixture of audience that was really spectacular. And I wish we would be able to, do it again, because in Venice we don't even have many green areas, for example. We don't have many gardens, and the main public gardens are actually the gardens of the Biennale that are now privatized by the Biennale. So you need a ticket to enter. So this is the big contradiction.

SR: The Microclima project was just one project that you've been working on, but you've also mentioned that there are a lot of different projects in the lagoon. And the local community, see Venetia the lagoon as the space to be working in and not just Venice, the kind of international location. So you've sort of been talking a little bit about the idea of ecologies or ecosystems. It's interesting because Venice itself, Venice island is a, is synonymous with the issue of the sea levels rising and this kind of pressure and, any major rain and something floods. But then you're kind of really acutely aware of how important it is to be aware of the ecologies. And then the artists that we've been talking to, they are working in this kind of a similar way where there's this ecosystem of people really working in site specific way. It's different from somewhere like maybe Paris or New York where people are kind of in their studios making and they have their exhibition. Here it seems to be that everybody's really responding to place.

AOS: Absolutely. I think there is this also sense of belonging that is growing. Of course, I say it because, I feel like an adopted Venetian who decided to stay because it's fully, madly in love with this incredible, incredible city. And it's true that Venice is considered an archetype to study and reflect upon the most pressing ecological and social issues nowadays in a very small place. Because here you have of course the terrible frictions of mass tourism. The problem of housing. Housing and houses are disappearing for residencies. Then of course, you have, as you mentioned, sea level rise, but then of course, climate change and everything is in this very small island or connections of islands.

AOS: And at the same time nowadays, we inhabitants of Venice are very low. The number is very low. They count more or less 56,000, which is nothing. And so somehow I think that people who choose to stay, because it's actually pretty complicated to live here, and it's completely different from any other places. So everything is just... Can create complications. Also daily actions. People who decide to stay here are somehow resisting to a bigger change that is coming outside. And I see a lot of love and passion in what everybody does, at least in the creative world, to keep Venice a living city.

[music]

SR: You've achieved so much in your career, you've got a really impressive CV, and I'd like to talk about at such a young age, how you achieved so much.

AOS: Well, thank you so much, because I don't feel like that, but, [laughter] even though I'm super happy about what I've done and I do, but, I actually feel very, yeah. That I still have to find my place in the world. Everybody does, probably. But the power of collaboration, well, it's beautiful. I've just recently realised it in a more conscious way that make me work with people, makes me happy, generally happy and gives me the energy of just finding a reason for what I do is exchanging ideas, giving support to each others, also creating social ecosystems actually that are positive and healthy. Creative ecosystems are healthy, because individuals can take different routes and different directions in life. Now you can either go into a more destructive direction or you can either put together all your energies and create something.

AOS: And I have always been very careful about choosing the second path. I also grew up in a family where I didn't share the interest, that I have now. So I've always found in other groups, somehow other forms of families where I developed my interest and what made me happy. So this idea of collaborating in groups and respecting each other's individuality. So I don't like the alienation of being in a group for finding an identity, but more this idea of nurturing different individualities, yes. And create in a sinews way something, yeah. It's fundamental, it's like how Venice was built. [laughter]

SR: You would have to relinquish a lot of control when you're working collaboratively. You can't be too fixed on what you want.

AOS: Yeah, exactly. Because you have to overcome the desire of your individuality or the desire of mirroring your personal expectations. And as you said, to kind of lose a little bit of control. It's an interesting alchemy that happens, which can be hard, but you can train to let things go.

SR: Yeah, 'cause there's this idea that a committee can... Deciding by a committee can dilute an idea. But then there's also an idea that some of the parts is that can be weaker and the whole is much stronger. So I guess it sort two opposing views and it really just depends on the situation. I know myself, I'm very used to working on my own. And working on the Biennale this year with the creative director team on the Australia Pavilion was one of the best experiences I've had because we all respected, listened to each other, and what we brought to the team, everybody just kind of, when one person said something, everybody just went, yes, we support that. How can we build on that? And then somebody else said something. So it was never... No one ever got pushed down, which meant that the project just grew stronger and stronger, and it became something which no individual could have made. And it was quite a beautiful process, so I really enjoyed that, but it was a new experience for me.

AOS: And after this experience, would you like to keep working with this systems of collective groups and actions? Was it a milestone, let's say in your...

SR: It's been really interesting watching you and listening to the projects that you've been working on and seeing how much can be achieved because you only, no one's good at everything, are they? So it's having a team where everybody has their role.

AOS: Yeah, absolutely. For me was a big lesson was the Floating Cinema that started as a crazy idea. At the beginning the municipality told us, you're crazy, you're not doing it. It's too complicated, too dangerous, too many laws to face, and it's just dangerous. It's just, to put 300 people on the water for a couple of hours. And then it started like a utopian idea, and then it was realised, and it actually lived and developed thanks to the collaboration of friends, volunteers, people that were just in love with the atmosphere. Not only the setting is gorgeous, but the atmosphere, the energy was even better than the aesthetical outcome that these beautiful sunsets on the Floating Cinema give you, and also this fact that in the chaos, there is a little bit of like horizontal movement. There are not so many hierarchies there and it might lead to panic sometimes.

AOS: Especially the first editions where we didn't know like how to... We didn't have proper solutions or like for everything because we were experimenting, but it was beautiful that in this like chaotic movement then, everything worked all the time. And also this idea of giving trust to the people you have around because you all have the same common desire of creating the same thing and you know that in one way or the other, things will go well because the energy and the spirits you share are powerful. So I think it's also a matter of trust other people.

SR: So what drew you to Venice? Because you weren't born in Venice.

AOS: That's true. I always say that I am an adopted Venetian, so I feel like I am Venetian, but I actually was born in a small city not far from here in the same region, the region of Veneto. My hometown is called Conegliano, mostly famous for, well, art lovers know it because of Cima da Conegliano, painter of the Renaissance period and wine lovers know it for Prosecco. So it's beautiful town actually one hour from here in a hilly countryside. So luckily very much surrounded by nature. But yeah, as you said, that I decided to move into this beautiful place, Venice when I was 19 years old to actually study history of art. So I arrived here as a student and I actually happened to stay.

SR: Okay. Well, you didn't move very far from home. So you were very lucky to have this sort of epicenter here.

AOS: No, I didn't grow up in an art family. I have to say my interest in art actually started from literature at the beginning. So I really use books and literature to go and hide in beautiful imaginaries and worlds where I wanted to belong. And then actually art grew as a passion when I was in high school and I started to realise that art could actually be the perfect crossroad for multiple disciplines. So literature, history, philosophy, anthropology. So yeah, I have to say that I grew up with a happy childhood, you can say, my passion then kind of grew a little bit independently.

SR: So did you have a natural childhood or a childhood with lots of time in nature and imagination or.

AOS: Yes, I had a childhood very filled with the female love. I grew up in a female family. I am the fourth of four siblings. So I grew up with my mom and with my three sisters and I am the youngest one. So I grew up in this very, very big family. Also my mom has many, many siblings. They are like 12 and they all grew up in the mountains the Dolomites. So I grew up surrounded with lots of female figures and nature. Of course nature was a big part of it as well.

[music]

SR: Alice, you're studying your PhD at the University of Hamburg. Can you tell me a little bit about the research topic?

AOS: Yes, sure. I started in 2021, this research that was in my mind for a couple of years and it's called Flashback Fascism. The research I'm doing within the department of art history is investigation about artist books, visual poetry, and works on paper made by artists from 1960s onwards in which there is a visible clear appropriation of fascist propaganda in a satirical ironic way, primarily to share an antifascist stance So either there were loads of artists who were actually very politically involved and militant and antifascist and other artists that tried to express their bitterness and their position against new forms of fascisms that were present in the 1960s onwards. They are here until today, actually, in other artists that did it in a very... In a more subtle way. But I was really interested in that because unfortunately fascism was born in Italy with Mussolini fascism.

AOS: And what really interested me was this idea that the collective unconscious exists and images iconographies, symbols are important tools to awaken this subconscious mind that we collectively share somehow, but it's very... It's also very dangerous. Images can be also very dangerous and strategic tools to manipulate masses. So these frictions for me was really interesting, especially because Italian societies is struggling with its fascist past, we tend not to talk about it. We tend to deny how cruel the impact of fascism was in Italy and in the former Italian colonies. So for me this research was something I had in mind and it's a topic that is too little investigated yet. And of course, to compare it with what's happening nowadays and with other forms of fascism around the world, for me, it's really important in this moment.

AOS: Because symbols and images are powerful and to use it as your main image is disturbing.

SR: Well, the visual language, they're very sophisticated with the language that they're using. In terms of your research, I can see it would be a partly disturbing and partly exciting process to see, to dissect and analyze the symbols that were used. And the historical references and how that really gets right into the psyche of the people. In terms of fear, living with fear. So what led you to do this research?

AOS: Good question because we talked a lot about ecology and, ocean literacy and advocacy and then, public spaces, and then everybody's like, and why do you do this research? [laughter] What's the connection? I started to be interested in this topic because I was at the University of St. Andrews when I was studying there. I was researching a performance made by an artist, Italian artist called Fabio Mauri in 1971 that was called What is Fascism, and was an exercise and the theater piece, but also a collective performance he did as the final part of university class of aesthetics. So basically what he did in Rome in 1971 was to put together something like 20 students and to make a re-enactment of the fascist games that the fascist youth used to do during fascism. Fabio Mauri was born, and actually grew up, his childhood during fascism.

AOS: So it's something that he lived, himself. So he did these re-enactments that were for two hours, parades of skaters, musicians, then screenings of propaganda, images from isitutoluce and the public that was witnessing this spectacle were actually invited guests by the artists that were obliged to be seated in specific places. For example, there was the writer, Natalia Ginzburg. She was Jewish. She was supposed to sit in the Jews sector, for example.

AOS: Also the participation, or journalists were obliged to sit in the press section. So there was also this re-enactment not only from the performance, but also from the public trying to reconstruct a past that was not really over. So in 1971 was the beginning of what they were called "the years of lead." So, one of the most violent moment for Italy after the Second World War ended that basically saw the massacre and violence between, citizens.

AOS: So it was basically a decade of terrorism between the neo-fascist movements, more extreme right and extreme left actions factions and movements. And the fear and of new rising fascism was very high. So was still present. Also because after fascism, when fascism ended, what happened was that officially the dictatorship ended, the war ended, but fascists that were at the government happened to stay in the new Democratic republic.

AOS: So the people were the same. They were just changing dresses and uniforms. But I really got... Sorry, this was quite long explanation, but it really, made me reflect upon the beauty of, and the power of using art forms also outside the traditional exhibition formats to engage with the public in different spaces and to make people reflect, with awareness about the state of things that could be ecologically politically. I thought he was a brilliant, brilliant mind, and I decided to keep, working into this direction.

SR: Well, if you think about it, a political system is an ecology, really, because it finds its way into every fabric, the whole fabric of life. And also that performance that you were referring to reminded me of the Playground, the Unaccompanied Children play. Obviously it's very different because it was much more, it had an agenda, whereas the one that you did with Paolo was more free and it was more open and it was more, innocent. But it seemed that kind of that performance to unearth ideas through play. Would you say there was some sort of, I don't know... Yeah, I just thought of that.

AOS: Oh, it's really beautiful to hear that. I've never thought about it, but it's... You are right. Yeah. It's staging performance in a collective way to raise awareness of a specific context.

SR: Yes, exactly.

AOS: Yeah. I agree. That's really nice. You detected that.

SR: Being in Venice. Your tentacles seem to be not yours specifically, but that's the nature of Venice. The tentacles go out and then they bring things in. Are you working on something with Venice or.

AOS: So actually now I've started a new project recently, which is super excited... I'm super excited to be part of, I'm starting to work as a project manager for a series of books of an independent, publishing house based in Venice called Wetlands. And Wetlands, was born three years ago. They publish, fiction stories of international artists that are related to Venice. But the idea is not only to set a story in Venice, but as said, to use Venice as an archetype to speak about the Anthropocene climate change, ecological issues that Venice as said, embodies in a small, but powerful scale. So now I will be manager of a new series of books that are going to be written by writers from Africa or Afro descendant writers.

AOS: So the idea is actually to start thinking and sharing ideas about Venice and the Anthropocene, but outside the Europocentric vision and to include vision from Africa, because, I mean, it's not that I am telling this, but Africa is the future. Because of the population, because of the resources, so I'm really thrilled that I'm starting to work, also on this.

SR: So my last question is that... And this is a perfect segue, that you're working on this series of books fiction, African writers coming to Venice. It's quite magical. Venice really is this place, which is a fictional place in your mind. It's obviously a real place, but there's this real sort of sense of no boundaries or borders. It's so the water are kind of, it's also fluid. So I guess in part, I've answered the question, but could you just talk a little bit about the nature of the place and how that inspires the imagination?

AOS: Sure. For me, this aspect is absolutely important. So Venice, every day reminds me the importance of utopia and so of imagination every day. Because you are constantly reminded that something absurd, and utopistic, utopian, maybe utopian something absurd and utopian can be translated from the mind to the physical world. There's a beautiful book, by Sara Marini called Venice 2nd Document, where two authors that I really like are quoted. One is Massimo Cacciari. He used to say... He said and he wrote that, Venice is the place of the mind. And the architect, Le Corbusier, said that Venice is the city of the future.

AOS: So to actually reflect upon Venice as the city of the mind, ideas, imaginations, but also of action and future, and making things, also imagining something in fiction and then trying to realize it is. I mean, I totally agree with this two connotations. And yeah. Then of course for me, one of the most important project where we actually managed to realize a small utopia was the Floating Cinema. That is an independent festival, [chuckle] let's say, related to the moving image and music performances have been part for three years.

AOS: And the idea was not necessarily to screen beautiful movies and works that has happened and still happen. But the idea was to put together on a floating platform, on the southern part of the lagoon. A community of people that were obliged to detach from the ground, to leave behind all the certainties they know and to embrace nature and the lagoon, in its purest form. And also to be together in an unknown public space, was really important to shift the perspective on things because this is what Venice does for me, and this is why it's important to creativity, is that it obliges you to physically change the point of view on things. And by doing this, you can also mentally shift your perspective on things and imagine in an extraordinary way. And also to bring what is extraordinary into the ordinary of daily life. For me, that's the dream. And so, [laughter] I would love to keep doing that if possible.

SR: Thank you so much, Alice. That was really beautiful.

AOS: Thank you.

SR: We had a fantastic conversation.

AOS: You listening to all this I hope, [laughter] the listeners of your podcast will move to Venice for a while. This is a, [laughter] promotional campaign. We need more inhabitants. We need more people to stay.

[laughter]

SR: That's interesting.

[laughter]

SR: I was saying to my friend, she said that she was trying to work out where to move to, 'cause she wants to move to Europe, and she's like, London, Paris…. I said, Venice is the best because you're in the center, and you've got access to all the best minds. But you're in nature and the city is too tiring. And Venice is... It's quite beautiful and you can find your ways, away from the tourists quite easily, once you've been here for a little while.

AOS: Yeah. I said we have loads of islands.

[laughter]

SR: Yeah, you do. Thank you for listening to the first episode of Art Destinations. We will return in two weeks with an interview with Cosimo Ferrigolo, whose performance-based work responds to the atmospheres within abandoned spaces. In the meantime, please subscribe to Art Destinations wherever you find your podcasts. And sign up to our newsletter on our website, artdestinations.org. Ciao for now.

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