About thirty students attend this first lesson by Professors Michael Hardt and Stefano Graziani on Venice and Globalization: twenty are VIU students and ten are from IUAV/Arts and Design.
Michael introduces the project to students, explaining that the objective is not to create beautiful images, but to start and intellectual process, trying to visually think by images. He also explains that, to achieve this result, students will have to unlearn how to take pictures, trying to build meaning instead.
Stefano Graziani, professor at Iuav/Arts and Design and at Trieste University, underlines what Michael just said, pointing out that the process the students will have to go through is a visual thinking one.
For instance, he explains, how can we represent McDonald’s or Nike in Venice without actually shooting images of the fastfood or of the shops? Maybe we could analyze their relationship with Venice in a more subtle way.
Stefano shows the students some images by photographer Paul Graham, from his book “End of an age“. The cover depicts a close up of a man with red eyes. Red eyes is one of the most common mistakes when you shoot photographs using a flash. Nowadays digital cameras are built and set up to avoid red eyes. By shooting this picture, Graham is trying to tell us something.
Photos are taken in a pub, you can understand that people portrayed are white, young, bored and rich enough to often spend nights drinking at a pub. The photographer shoots pictures of the same subject from diffferent angles, the background is blurred because of the flash, another thing that a professional photographer usually avoids.
From his work we understand that, like him, we will have to avoid the danger of beauty, which is the attempt to be spectacular. We should better take pictures for ourselves, in the first place.
Michael asks students to reflect upon how a photographic process can communicate ideas, transforming a series of images into an intellectual project. He says that it would be a good idea to form mixed groups, each one of them should feature a Iuav student and to form them according to the places the students will decide to visit.
Stefano presents his soon to be released book “On Taxonomy”, published by A+M. The project investigates the system of classifying the visible. For this project he has worked in various Natural History museums and on some entomology collections in Italy, Israel, France, England, China. In the last year he has also been engaged on a project, commissioned by the Trieste University and directed by Antonello Frongia, that focuses on the territory between Italy and Slovenia. The frontier landscape and space has been identified as a privileged place in terms of cohabitation and development of diversities.
Stefano points out how those pictures tell things: a donkey (the race coming from Somalia) actually tells us about colonialism and in the same way some botanic gardens tell us about colonialism and explorations.
Stefano reminds the students the story of naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) who sent many of his disciples around the world to collects seeds he intended to acclimatate in the south part of Sweden. His project failed but he and his disciples dedicated their whole life to it.
He also speaks about the Bounty mutiny, which happened because officers were giving water to the breadfruit planitngs, taken from Tahiti, that the London Royal Society intended to acclimatate in the Caribbean, instead that giving it to the crew. London Royal Society planned to use the breadfruit to feed cheap food to the slaves in the Caribbean islands.
Michael points out that it’s not beauty to be interesting in images, but their capacity to convey meaning.
Stefano says what is really important is the interaction between photographer and subjects portrayed: the experience you have during the process, meeting people and getting to know new places.
Michael remarks the concept of intellectual investigation on Venice and globalization, and underlines the need of going beyond the surface of the relationship the city has with globalization.
Giulia Nomis, in representance of Iuav students, proposes a visit to Marghera, because it’s a city on the borders of Venice, a place were many different flows concentrate: touristic, economical ones, and many more.
In Marghera there is conflictuality that makes globalization more evident: born as a workers’ city, the town later changed because of migratory fluxes. Giulia suggests to visit the mainland and the province of Venice to understand what the Veneto economic miracle has really been.
She also mentions S.Erasmo island, which economy is still based on agriculture and Pellestrina, which inhabitants live preminently on fishing.
Michael suggest that the students form groups to understand how every zone works, from an economical point of view or to have different groups analyzing different aspects of a zone, or to form groups according to the students attitude.
Michael finally reminds students that there will be an exhibition to be held in mid December and suggests to have a meeting in two weeks, to present a first level of the work, with at least some photographic notes.
Michael tries to propose various days to organize the visits jointly, but students have different free days and it looks like it won’t be possible to plan visits in one or two groups, but smaller ones.
