Study in Venice
Last updated on April 17th, 2023
The call for application for 'THE SHAPE OF WATER - Arts in Venice Summer School' is now open.
Read all details in the call for application and follow the instrucions you will find in the online application form.
Why a Summer School in Venice?
Venice is a gauge whereby to measure the problems involved when building a global future capable of combining liveability and beauty and the relevant solutions, which is why Study in Venice has chosen to offer a Summer School centred on the lagoon city.
As a candidate for World Capital of Sustainability, Venice boasts a unique artistic, musical and urban heritage and a major international role as a centre for the promotion and dissemination of contemporary art and culture.
Its dimension as a globally interconnected microcosm, the complexity of the lagoon ecosystem – which is threatened by climate change –, the socio-economic problems linked to tourist flows and their impact on urban liveability, and above all its 'liquid' nature as a city founded on and influenced by water, make the city of Venice a fascinating case study that offers those who live there and study it the measure of the paradoxes and contemporary difficulties inherent in the search for cultural, ecological and social models.
The project: multidisciplinarity, workshops and international atmosphere
THE SHAPE OF WATER is an experimental, multidisciplinary training project that aims at welcoming diverse students from all over the world who wish to experience Venice together in order to draw inspiration from it and build an original narrative vision of the lagoon city.
The students will be guided by professors from the four partner institutions on a journey combining the hands-on exploration of the city with guided tours and university lectures on Archaeology, Architecture, Art and Music History, Performing Arts and Environmental Science.
The Summer School will be curated by Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Venice, 1979), an artist who combines great international experience with a profound knowledge of the city. The 'Souvenise' programme designed by Andreotta Calò for the Summer School sees the city of Venice as a privileged observatory from which to try to understand the changes that are taking place on a macroscopic scale. The focus of the investigation will be water, which, with its cadenced variations in level dictated by tides, is the element that most characterises the territory, thereby governing its flows and most manifest phenomena.
The practice of walking, which is a fundamental element in the artist's research, will become an instrument for exploring the city and its immediate surroundings. During the planned collective walks, the students will be invited to collaborate actively through visual, tactile and sound practices and exercises. Said practices will be useful in informing the students’ own unprecedented vision of the city, regardless of the trajectories defined by mass tourism, which often does not take into account the complexity and fragility that characterise this place.
The final part of the workshop will enable the participants to synthesise their experiences in the field and the theoretical courses into an intensive workshop that will see them create a 'souvenir' based on a project or a music text, which will represent their personal experience of the city and its ecosystem, including artistic performances. The materials collected during the workshop will thus be studied with the intention of transforming and overturning the rationale underlying souvenirs, that is, objects symbolic of the city and the tourist monoculture that defines it in the eyes of the world.
The experience of the Summer School will be compiled in video/sound recordings that will document the two weeks of research on Venice.
THE SHAPE OF WATER - Arts in Venice Summer School Colophon
Artistic Director: Giorgio Andreotta Calò
Scientific Director: Stefano Riccioni
Scientific Coordination:
Cecilia Franchini (Benedetto Marcello Conservatory)
Stefano Riccioni (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Giuliano Sergio (Academy of Fine Arts of Venice)
Angela Vettese (Iuav University of Venice)