cover
cover

Drifting Gondolas

The Precarious Present of an Artistic Artefact

Elisa Bellato    Università di Verona    

VIEW PDF DOWNLOAD PDF

abstract

Gondolas are still potent Venetian icons. Nonetheless, now they face a profound identity crisis, as a consequence of market trends and the use of new materials and techniques which are radically changing the way they are built. From a wider perspective, the juxtaposition between the new ‘gondola simulacrum’ an empty symbol without any artisan quality and the traditional ‘gondola valuable handicraft’ reflects the clear dividing line between the city of Venice crossed every year by almost 30 million tourists and the living city animated by inhabitants and original activities. In this way the process of gondola’s heritagisation (recent attempts to candidate it in the UNESCO List) becomes a lens to read the destiny of an entire city where resilient energies, not properly native but deeply rooted, look for forms of survival to mechanisms of mass tourism.

Pubblicato
31 Dicembre 2017
Accettato
21 Marzo 2017
Presentato
21 Dicembre 2016
Lingua
EN
ISBN (PRINT)
978-88-6969-225-3
ISBN (EBOOK)
978-88-6969-179-9

Keywords: Venetian craftsmanshipUnescoGondola’s heritagisation

Copyright: © 2017 Elisa Bellato. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.