Against Venice/For Venice Campaign

The communication campaign to promote the city - conceived and realised by Fabrica - is under way

Venice, 19 July 1999. The presentation ofColors 33: Venice how much?, a special issue of the international magazine published by Benetton dedicated to the  “Serenissima” (i.e. Venice), marks the launch of"AgainstVenice/ForVenice", a communication campaign conceived and realised by Fabrica (the Benetton communications research centre) requested by Massimo Cacciari, mayor of the lagoon city.

The campaign, which will last for the entire summer season, aims at drawing attention to Venice’s problems, a unique, world-renowned city that produces beauty and ugliness in equal measure, through images and initiatives, with some provocative ones.  Frozen in time by its own reputation, Venice is trapped in a damaging spiral of mass day-tripper tourism and it is suspended between the indifference of its residents and indiscriminate economic exploitation.

A dozen of real, high-impact images representing some of Venice's principal problems, ranging from the collection of enormous quantities of litter left by tourists to the invasion of pigeons, have been put on display at ACTV’s water-bus stops.  The aim is to induce thought among residents and the thousand of tourists, which transit everyday in the streets of the city.

To strongly stress the need to free Venice from the fluids, objects and antiquated ideas that are blocking its future, two-metre high plunger-shaped installations have been set up by attaching suction cups to wooden handles inspired to the traditional decorated poles to which noble Venetian families once moored their gondolas. These symbolic items, located at the beginning and end of the classic route along the Grand Canal and reproduced in life-size in photographs, as well as on T-shirts, form an imaginary army of purification. This is headed by a 12 metre-high plunger in the middle of San Marco basin (almost an ironic version of the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey) which bears witness to the urgent need for renewal and for a genuine civic, cultural, ecological and economic renaissance of the city.

 

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