Notturni Contemporanei | geoliteray walk through Venice nightscapes – 2 Feb 2024

Notturni Contemporanei. Un’esplorazione geoletteraria dei nightscapes veneziani is part of the geoliterary walks series CONTESTI organised by the Museum of Geography of the University of Padua. Notturni Contemporanei, as part of the NaMUC seminar series, also contributed to the public engagement activities promoted by the MoHu-based Unit of the PRIN PNRR research project WALC – Walking Landscapes of Urban Cultures.

Fostering the process of attunement to the atmospheres of the local urban night, the open-air seminar, organised by Giada Peterle and Giuseppe Tomasella, engaged participants in a night walk through the winter city, drawing on a selection of works by contemporary authors living in, walking through and writing about Venice. Their literary representations revealed experiences, practices and realities co-producing the nightscapes of those people considering the city as their birthplace, home or safe harbour.

Strolling along the calli, the texts invited non-academic participants (25 attendees of different ages and backgrounds) to steer away from the stereotypes and clichés of Venice’s iconography. The geoliterary exploration of local nightscapes, in fact, offered renewed understandings of the entwined relations connecting the excesses of the tourism phenomenon with the decline of residential communities. The night walk was a chance to disclose the ‘glocal’ features of the rising fears related to the consequences of the climate crisis looming over Venice.