The locals of Venice feel they are losing their voice. The reality of their city goes unseen beneath layers of mass tourism and imagined nostalgia. Their home which should act as the background to their lives has been brought to the fore. The true foreground of Venice, the narratives of its use and of the people who inhabit it, has been forgone in favour of painted and photographed images of ancient canals and weathered architecture. The world treats Venice as a capsule of the past and too often chooses to ignore the present state and true life of the city that remains somehow hidden in plain sight.
If the city of Venice is seen as the city of conservation, there must be a way to conserve the lost voices of its people. The project proposes an archive and exhibition to the city that gathers the city’s unseen narratives and exhibits them in a place that is ‘of Venice’. In this way, the project restores the foreground of Venice over the background of its architecture and bring its unseen narratives to light.
