Study in Venice
Posted On 30-06-2023
The kick off of the project conceived by Study in Venice - a network made up of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, the Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory, Ca' Foscari University of Venice and Iuav University of Venice - is getting closer. The Summer School will last two weeks and 16 students from all over the world and with different backgrounds will experience Venice, to draw inspiration and build an original narrative vision on the lagoon city.
The first edition of the Arts in Venice Summer School The Shape of Water was presented today at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia by Riccardo Caldura (Venice Academy of Fine Arts ), Stefano Riccioni (Ca' Foscari University of Venice), Roberto Gottipavero (Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory) and the artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò .
The Summer School, which will be held in Venice from 3rd to 14th July 2023, is a unique initiative resulting from the collaboration between the four Venetian higher education institutions which joined together since 2017 in the Study in Venice network. It is a pilot and multidisciplinary project which will accompany the students to understand and experience the city through lessons, visits and workshops in archeology, architecture, history of art and music, performing arts and environmental sciences, many of which held directly in the field**.
The nationalities of the 16 participants, selected by the Summer School Scientific Committee, are very heterogeneous: Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Latvia, Norway, the Czech Republic, Russia and Taiwan ROC. The program will develop over two weeks and instructors from the four Venetian institutions will be involved in the program.
The director of the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Riccardo Caldura, highlighted the importance of a project which is the result of the networking among institutions from the same city: «Academy of Fine Arts, Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory, Ca' Foscari University and Iuav University each represent four excellences in higher education in their own field and together they are able to create a surprising potential, in a city like Venice which will increasingly attract students from all over the world - Caldura explained - we are particularly proud to contribute to this first edition of the Summer School thanks to the artistic direction of Giorgio Andreotta Calò, who needs no introduction and some years ago graduated in Sculpture right in the ateliers of the Academy here in Venice».
Stefano Riccioni , scientific director and professor of Medieval Art History at Ca' Foscari, underlined the very current value of Venice as a case study: «The dimension of a globally interconnected microcosm, the complexity of the lagoon ecosystem threatened by climatic conditions, the socio-economic problems related to tourist flows and their impact on urban livability, and above all the "liquid" dimension of a settlement based on water and conditioned by it, make Venice a fascinating phenomenon that offers to those who live here and who study it a measure of paradoxes and contemporary difficulties in the search for cultural, ecological and social models».
The artistic direction of the program is led by Giorgio Andreotta Calò, an internationally renowned Venetian artist, who will lead the participants in the Souvenise Laboratory workshop: the practice of walking, an important aspect of Andreotta Calò's artistic research, will become a way to explore the city and its surroundings. Through collective walks, students will be invited to actively participate with visual, tactile and sound practices and exercises, useful for developing a new vision of the city beyond the trajectories defined by mass tourism. «Venice is already a place of study, an open-air book that can be read and experienced while walking by - the artist explains -. The path, like navigation, allows us to read the city from its complementary perspectives. It emerges and submerges in its waters, returning unprecedented visions and manifesting a cadenced rhythm, almost a breath, to which we will try to tune in. Listening will also be a moment in which to absorb the city, its noises, its language, its way of speaking to us. We will try to settle a memory and a memory of it. Our vision is based on sustainability and wants to oppose the consumerist perspective of the city».
The director of the Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory, Roberto Gottipavero, focused on some aspects in common between musicians' life and the experience of living in a unique city like Venice. «This first edition of the Summer School symbolizes the union and synthesis of our four institutions, a synergy of elements that unite us but, at the same time, which we sometimes observe from different angles. If breathing and listening will be a fundamental part of the students' experience, one cannot fail to mention the fact that these elements represent the very heart of music. Rhythm, also understood as a motor expression of our body, breathing, listening, are typical concepts of musical language: there is no music without rhythm and breath. Listening, such as listening to the sounds of the city, draws the innate attention of musicians of all times to the sounds that surround us. Furthermore, the element of water has always been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for musicians of all times, from antiquity to the present day, such as for example for the last great orchestral composition by Claudio Ambrosini».
The Summer School program includes, among other modules, the discovery of the Venetian art of building organs located in the various churches of the city; a path of historical musical investigation through the book collections of the Benedetto Marcello Music Conservatory and its digitization; the historical relationship between Venice and electronic music, where Giuseppe Sinopoli first, and then Alvise Vidolin gave life to one of the first and most prestigious Schools of this kind in Italy; a focus on the relationship between Tintoretto and water through the visit and the discovery of some of the master's masterpieces at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco; the deepening of the origins of the foundation of Venice beyond the legends and with attention to the evolution of the ecosystem and the role of the port structures; the growing role of contemporary art and exhibition opportunities promoted by an increasing number of Italian and international institutions in the Lagoon; the potential of the new artificial intelligence also in the perspective of the conservation and future of Venice.
The Summer School is carried out with the technical and administrative support of the Ca' Foscari School for International Education.