The Venice Carnival has started. The program includes demonstrations and appointments starting today, in a climate that, timidly and in compliance with all safety regulations, is trying to get out of the closures imposed by the pandemic. Remember the future / Remembering the future is the theme of this event. Because, in a city as rich in past as Venice, it is the past itself that triggers the desire for the future. "Full of unknowns but also of surprises and contradictions. Walking around Venice - explains the curator Massimo Checchetto - we are forced to constantly change direction even when you have a precise goal. The calli end in a turning. Behind a turning point a surprise, often a wonder, almost always a future". For this reason, the future was chosen as the theme of the Venice Carnival, “A place in constant contradiction, where dreams and reality merge”.
A widespread Carnival will animate calli, campi and campielli with music, circus-theater, puppets, acrobatics and clowning
And what better party than Carnival can speak of dreams and reality, play and fiction at the same time, in the most authentic spirit of this event. Which overturns reality and opens unexpected scenarios, often giving the same suggestions that the city of Venice offers every day.
So let's arm ourselves with a mask and tricorn to attend this unusual Carnival that will be characterized by events distributed as much as possible on the territory to avoid all occasions for gathering. And that for this very reason it will be a work in progress Carnival, a pandemic-sized Carnival. Once the health obligation of the outdoor mask is over, it can be replaced with that of the disguise. Playing for a few days to be, under the mask, what you are not.
The Water Festival in the historic spaces of the Arsenale
Today 12 and tomorrow 13 February, Saturday 19 and Sunday 20, and in the days of the fat week from Thursday 24 February to Tuesday 1 March, a widespread program of permanent shows will be staged in Venice, Venice Wonder Time, Strabilierie and Diffuse Art for the city. The visionary creativity of street artists will become music, circus-theater, puppets, acrobatics and clowning, animating calli, campi and campielli, but also bridges and canals, sotoporteghi and foundations. Street art will replicate itself as an echo from one district of the city to another. While in the historic spaces of the ancient Arsenal the traditional Water Festival will be transferred. Nebula Solaris, this is the name of the festival, includes a series of shows that with air, water, earth and fire will create visions between dreams and reality.
Carnival at the time of the pandemic does not allow the programming of traditional shows in Piazza San Marco. But the Piazza will, however, host a scenographic installation to best contextualize those who want to parade in masks. They can be visited in costume i Venetian museums which, in addition to a rich program of cultural initiatives related to Carnival, include a series of extraordinary evening openings until 22pm, really an added value. And it will seem to go back in time walking alongside some eighteenth-century ladies in the ancient spaces of Palazzo Ducale, the Correr Museum, Palazzo Mocenigo, Ca 'Rezzonico and Casa Goldoni.
An exhibition of the Biennale dedicated to the first modern Carnivals curated by Maurizio Scaparro
The Biennale also participates in the Carnival with an exhibition in the Portego di Ca 'Giustinian. Carnival breaks through the fog. Venice, Scaparro, La Biennale 1980, 1981, 1982, 2006 proposes photographs, videos, posters, documents, objects and period articles from the Biennale Archive. They tell and illustrate the memorable Carnivals conceived and organized by Maurizio Scaparro. The Venice Carnival was reborn in those years and thanks to those editions, becoming a national and international reference point. The stage costumes from the Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci will also be exhibited, which in 2006 was at the center of the Carnival The dragon and the lion, dedicated to China and Marco Polo's journey.
And what a party it is, remembering also those that will be held in famous Venetian palaces. From Ca 'Vendramin Calergi to Palazzo Pisani Moretta where the Doge's Ball will return on the night of February 26th. Under the banner, and will be the theme of the evening, of rebirth: of the crafts of art, of the Venice Carnival, of each of us.
The live shows of the Carnival will be broadcast on the Facebook page of the Venice Carnival and in the Youtube playlist of Venezia Unica. These links can be accessed directly from the official website of the Venice Carnival: www.carnevale.venezia.it
(photo credits: Venice Carnival)
