Mending for the Apocalypse: The Construction of a Quasi-Death in Venice

Apocalypse in Venice is, nowadays, a common title in the newspapers to describe the latest event of “acqua alta”. Venice is dying, and we are morbidly watching the lagoon’s waters reclaiming this sinking city. Venice is dying, and it is better to hurry up and visit it before it is too late. Venetians are working to preserve Venice, to keep it barely alive in its decadence, so the masses of tourists can experience this almost exform architecture.
Interestingly, apocalypse in Venice has become a narrative of particularization and glamourization of an Anthropocene state of a city in perpetual decline, anchored to its past, which, nevertheless, has learnt to survive for its future.
On the one hand, the narrative about decadence and apocalypse has been performative in Venice since the romanticism, reproduced and mobilised by various forms of art. On the other, Venice has innovatively and creatively learned how to live in a liminal state with the constant menace of an imminent apocalypse, due to the particular position of its construction.
In the seminar, we will discuss how, throughout storms, wars, pestilence, invasions, and water management, Venice has embedded in its city an archaeology of apocalyptic futures, patching the losses through a creative and cultural representation of decadence. In the presentation, we will explore the socio-technical construction of organizing for the apocalypse through the concept of mending. We will analyse how the precarity of the city organization in front of the apocalypse is enacted in the production and consumption of cultural and creative imaginaries of its pasts and possible futures.