CIPHERS, ENCAMPMENTS, PLUGS

Fritz, who studied at the Architectural Institute of Venice a long time ago, asks an excellent question: is it Venice's incapacity (I'd say disinclination?) to be imprinted by the current moment in any [infra]structural way that makes it so open to contemporary art, architecture, film? So that it becomes a better cipher for what's new? Its permeability always defined it, organically, as a place receptive to what was other to itself—at least until it was plugged by industrially oriented infill and by the latest chapter of monumental humanoid folly: concrete floodgates sunken to imprint the mudflats with Berlusconi's name, soon-to-be Atlantis of obsolescence.

The floating Theater of the World by Aldo Rossi vs. the La Fenice Theater (rebuilt after the fire "where it was, as it was").

Further talk over dinner about ancient Rome as a place characterized architectonically by domestic encampments, and thus the paradox of current xenophobic outrage over encampments of Rom in this place. By Y-talyans, as Emilio Villa would call them.

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Also, a friend checks the time via his cellphone and I am seized with the realization that I haven't witnessed this gesture in three whole days outside of America: a gesture normally expressing the tic to eschew live encounter for the digitized feeds of someone/where other.