In the Depths of Wild Adriatic. Plots for an Isolario of Mud and Gold

Abstract

Beyond the certainty of the presence of the historic center of Venice with its major islands, the lagoon is defined by tiny lands, spots of an unstable constellation. Sometimes they correspond with a single architecture, other times sought-after and supervised refuges, or even memories of erased pasts, no longer emerging
or seasonally present, these are uncertain lands. Their presence is mediated by the tide; they cannot escape the context that besieges, surrounds and determines them. But, again, their advantage is that they are minor, marginal, sometimes wild and inextricable, paradoxically inaccessible. Like recurring thoughts, they are the
pretext for thinking about the ways and status of isolation, about links and misconceptions between the discard and the landscape, between wilderness and project, between Isolario Venezia Sylva, progetto dell’Unità di ricerca gold and mud.