White Heart in Venice - Piazza San Marco Lights Up

White Heart in Venice - Piazza San Marco by Venezia Rivelata

(Venice, Italy) Venezia Rivelata has taken the famous phrase: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" and thrown down the gauntlet.

Piazza San Marco was illumined by a great white heart made up of about a thousand Venetian residents holding white umbrellas and flashlights on Sunday evening, September 20, 2015, showing the deep love the people who live here have for their one-of-a-kind city that has been around since March 25, 421; that is, for 1,594 years.

Elena Tagliapietra & Alberto Toso Fei at Being Venice

Venezia Rivelata, or Venice Revealed, is a project conceived by Venetian writer Alberto Toso Fei and Venetian multi-media artist, Elena Tagliapietra, which included 12 separate events in historic locales over a period of two years to bring Venice's history alive in the present. Essere Venezia, or Being Venice -- the great white heart in Piazza San Marco -- was the Grand Finale.

The Red Rose in Piazza San Marco, the enormous human rose created on April 25 last year, Saint Mark's Day, was another one of the projects by Venezia Rivelata, which I wrote about here:

More Venetians than Tourists in Piazza San Marco and Open Arsenale 

 

On Sunday, everybody arrived at 6PM, dressed in white and armed with flashlights. Al Duca d'Aosta, the Venetian high-fashion store, provided white umbrellas to all -- I'm sure they will be the most coveted umbrellas in town once the rainy season starts. Then we all got hearts painted on our faces, or wherever we wanted them.

Cat Bauer at Being Venice - Essere Venezia

The artists who created the project chose white because it is the color of purity, justice, hope and enlightenment, and enforces the long history of the struggle for human rights in the Venetian Republic. Venice was an astonishingly advanced and tolerant society, and created laws that we still argue about globally today.

Alberto Toso Fei, who is an expert in Venetian history, spoke about VENICE AND JUSTICE later in the evening at the Rialto fish market. Venice was the first State to abolish slavery in 960AD, and the first to regulate the use of child labor at the end of the 14th century. Venice was the first to create an Intellectual Property law back in 1474, and the first to enact laws to protect the rights of women.

Dancers in Piazza San Marco

While we waited for the sun to go down, dance performers put on a show in the center of the heart featuring Sara Bonfanti and Silvia Minervino; the dance group, WorkInProgress, choreographed by Federica Del Pol and Michela Pedrocco; and the amazing young crew Palextra, coordinated by Michela Vivolo, that had some very cool moves.

Then the highlight: as night set in, the lights went on in Piazza San Marco with electric candles in all the windows in the square. We switched on our flashlights and waved them around. Then we opened our umbrellas, and waggled our flashlights around underneath the umbrellas. Then most of us rushed into the center of the heart and ran around, while the others maintained the outline of the heart, creating the of a cracked and broken heart transforming into the image of a beating heart. When it was over, we all broke out into spontaneous applause.

I really didn't grasp the enormity of the effect Elena Tagliapietra and Alberto Toso Fei had conceived until I saw the video. Here is the fast-motion clip of the result:

Essere Venezia - 20 settembre 2015 - panoramica from Venezia Rivelata on Vimeo.
(Here is the link for those who subscribe to Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog by email: https://vimeo.com/139869193)

Then many of the group headed over to Rialto, once the world's trade center, where the 12 projects created by Venezia Rivelata were projected on a screen. After Alberto's moving JUSTICE IN VENICE reading, it was free traditional food and drinks -- some tasty spaghetti in saor and spritzes -- sponsored by Osteria Vecio Posso in collaboration with Iperdrink and Flairtender.

Venezia Rivelata at the Rialto Fish Market

The founders say: "The time has come for all Venetians who love this city to fight to keep it alive and return it to the people."

Go to Venezia Rivelata on Facebook.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog