Venice and the Anthropocene: An ecocritical guide

by Cristina Baldacci (Editor), Shaul Bassi (Editor), Lucio De Capitani (Editor)

What does Venice look like when observed from the perspective of climate change, environmental collapse, and human-animal relations in an age of industrialization and mass extinction? That is, as a privileged observatory of the Anthropocene?

This guide, composed of several voices, forms a new, illuminating and disturbing mosaic of Venice and its Lagoon. What does the Venetian School of Painting tell us about our relationship with the environment and animals? What do peripheral places in the Lagoon like Porto Marghera and Pellestrina reveal about the advent and impact of modernity? What stories of extinction lie behind local delicacies like baccalà mantecato? What does the centuries-old relationship of Venetians with water tell us about other cities threatened by an increasingly hostile climate?

The guidebook, accompanied by a map, is intended as a tool for learning about the city in a new way. Venice emerges here as a unique ecosystem at risk, but also as a key to understanding our increasingly vulnerable world.

Preface by Serenella Iovino

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

239 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2023

Reviews

[Irene Alorda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked it up while strolling the very streets described in this book and making my own personal contribution to some of the issues harming Venice. What I loved most about this guide is how it makes you see the city through a completely different lens and promotes one of my favourite kinds of thought: looking at something, thinking nothing is happening there, and then slowly unbraiding all of the microbial, historical, botanical, economic, and countless other phenomena at play. When I visit again, I'll make sure to reread it and bring it with me, to make sure I miss out on as few stories as possible.

[Michiel Kamphuis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great alternative - largely academic - guide to Venice. Picked up some great ideas to see there in culture and nature. I also got a better understanding of Venice's and its lagoon's problems with not only the high tides and rising water but also the low tides and historical times of low water. The main negative is that I now have to go back, because I bought this book over there and read it afterwards.

[Zachariasz Czerwiński · Rating 2 out of 5]

liked the diversity of topics and interesting connections made but i think it’d benefit from having fewer but longer chapters. 2-3 pages per topic is not enough for the author to properly get into what they’re writing about, as a result a lot of the entries feel surface level, repeating the same points.

[Jules P · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
I bought this book on a recent trip to Venice. I saw it in the Giardini bookshop, decided it was too expensive, took a picture to remember and maybe order it for my birthday. Then I saw it in the Arsenale bookshop, then again in a small store in Castello, each time thinking maybe I should get it after all. The final day of my trip I encountered it again somewhere in Dorsoduro and I viewed it as a sign that I should get it. I enjoyed the read very much – the book gave me different perspectives and historical background on the places I had wandered, and it introduced me to interesting ideas. Reading about the "wadeshop" – learning about the anthropocene by wading through the mud of the lagoon, or the suggestion to carry around an open water container to rethink one's ways around the city will definitely keep me thinking the next couple of days. Unfortunately I agree with some other reviewers here that the essays were a bit too short to really be able to dive into the topic. Sometimes it felt like the essays acted as kind of appetizers but then didn't deliver the main course. Which is a pity because for each little chapter there was so much packed into these few pages. For instance, many touched upon the rising water level, in different degrees of detail. But it kept me wondering, how would the inevitable final flood take place? What is Venice's emergency plan, where would the residents go, how would the cultural artifacts be saved? I'm sure there are predictor-models and plans in case of emergency. I would be interested to learn about them, and this book would have been a perfect spot. All in all I'm glad I did finally pick up the book and I'm definitely going to attend the wadeshop next time I'm visiting (probably next Biennale season lol)

[Kylie Gambrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this gem while in Venice (July 2023). A deeply intelligent and multifaceted exploration of the Anthropocene and its impacts on the Venetian socio-environment. I enjoyed how this guide stepped out of the confines of words on a page to become a multimedia immersion into the authors’ experience of Venice in the Anthropocene.

[maja · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 interesting in terms of situating venice as a city in the larger conversation of climate change and the anthropocene but does little to add much new insight to the larger topic. definitely worth the read though, especially if visiting venice.

[Delaney Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for a class, and thought it would be way more interesting than it was- one of my classmates used the word “pretentious” to describe it and I kinda agree. I lot of it felt like the contributors were really really trying to make a big statement out of something that really wasn’t saying anything OR out of something that’s beauty lies in its simplicity. It was all just kind of snooty academic stuff but I wanted to learn about Venice :/

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and pertinent reading of Venice and its surrounding islands that centres this space as hydropolis and anthropocenic site through a myriad of lenses. Each contribution is around 3-4 pages (varying in form between essays, short stories, poems and audiovisual works), and I enjoyed them as bite-sized accounts, propositions and provocations that trace ways of living, histories and memory within this wonderful, complicated city, while also exploring it as a point of multispecies confluence and site of stark ecological change within the increasingly volatile and fragile Lagoon.

This guidebook and its beautiful foreword will stick with me - Venice is a "thinking machine"

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"La storia della gestione delle acque di Venezia può insegnarci molto sull'approccio da adottare quando s'affrontano sfide ambientali estremamente complesse. Un approccio che, a dispetto di molta retorica mediatica odierna, non deve essere per forza naturale. Venezia e la sua bellezza, del resto, sono sopravvissute fino ai nostri giorni proprio perché la Repubblica imparò come adattarsi a un ambiente in costante evoluzione, riuscendo a preservare artificialmente – dunque in maniera non naturale, e a prezzo di sforzi immensi – un paesaggio che era naturalmente destinato a trasformarsi in terraferma o in mare aperto."

[Luis Chiappetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh lowkey - I found that the selections often lacked depth or complex analysis of the people of / affecting the city and environment beyond just stating that a phenomenon exists and affects the environment. The waterscapes section was the most interesting for me, and the immersive section the least. Unfortunate, because a lot of the situations and places presented were superficially quite interesting, but the brevity and lack of complexity in commentary left me disappointed :(
In all, I wish more had been done with these topics; environmental writing like this can be really cool.

[SilviaM. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mah, sicuramente degli spunti interessanti ci sono, ma l'impianto generale, diviso in saggi così brevi, non lascia davvero apprezzare l'argomento. Troppi contributi, troppa carne al fuoco, troppo! Alcune ricerche, soprattutto verso la fine, opinabili.

[Rachel Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in Venice about a week ago, and bought this book while visiting. Reading it transported me back. The essays were really well selected and I became more immersed in the editor’s ecocritical paradigm the more I read. The pictures were stunning as well.

[Isla · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF👉48% done