Venice in three parts

A project by Laura Bergelt, Hannah Boekhorst and Johanna Lingen

Impromptu Course: Dreaming Venice – About space, time and beauty

Lecturers: Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christa Reicher, Canan Çelik and Fabio Bayro Kaiser

winter semester 2020/21

Our Idea is to depict Venice in a three-part animated Collage. Each piece represents through motion and pattern one aspect of space, time and beauty. From collage to collage, the scale is reduced, because we want that with each abstract composition you become more immersed in Venice and engage with the city on different levels. First Venice as a whole, then a smaller section, with the Grand Canal and surrounding residential development and finally a section of St. Mark‘s Square. In doing so, we also wanted to address the different levels of how one can perceive Venice. First as a city and its general reputation and how it is perceived in the world, then Venice as the city it is and how you experience it when you are there, and finally the real Venice.

We have also linked the previously named gradation to three problems and issues. The first collage showcases the problem of flooding in Venice. The second one deals with timelessness and transience and what this means for a city. The final collage deals with the issue of mass tourism and its meaning for Venice.

In addition, we did not want to address the three problems with our collages in an obvious or admonishing way. The collage series should rather arouse interest through the artistic aspect and open our interpretation of the problems upon closer inspection. One should linger in front of the collage and think about it, it is not about understanding it immediately. With the three questions “…a space worth fighting for?“, “…no need to change over time?“ and “…the real beauty of Venice?“ we want to stimulate ones thinking and leave the topic of Venice and its problems open to interpretation in the minds of the viewers.

The videos begin with the questions of the appendant topic and then run through their various animations in a loop, which is 30 seconds long. In our presentation we go through this loop twice, then the video starts again with the question. Thus, in the context of an exhibition this loop could go on for various times.

We created our collages using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects and AutoCAD.