Dérive Veneziane

The 72nd Venice Film Festival hosts the prémiere of the latest work of artist Antoni Muntadas, where he tries to show another side of the city, the hidden, the unknown, the mysterious.

In its 72nd edition, the Venice Film Festival will show the latest work of Antoni Muntadas, a video projection whose protagonist is the city of Venice: Dérive Veneziane.

Muntadas is one of the most important living artists and part of the first generation who has worked with video. He has an extensive internationally recognized career. Many of his works deal with architecture, which is what gave rise to Dérive Veneziane, a reflection on an unknown Venice, which the commissioners of the Venice Film Festival wanted to be able to bring to this event, showing the video installation at the Lido as a public projection.

Antoni Muntadas, <i>Dérive Veneziane</i>. © Antoni Muntadas — Antoni Muntadas, *Dérive Veneziane*. © Antoni Muntadas

Dérive Veneziane is about Venice. Cities are sometimes represented by strong stereotypes or clichés. Dérive Veneziane tries to show another side of the city, the hidden, the unknown, the mysterious. Through a journey based on the Situationists’ dérive, by night and from a boat… Dérive Veneziane brings notions of darkness, loneliness, discovery, loss, intrigue and phantasmagoria. Drifting by night through Venice, on water.

Encountering the unexpected and the unanticipated. A series of resulting tableaux precipitate a new awareness of this urban environment as it is transformed by darkness. Removing all predictable daytime paths, this wandering mise-en-scène gives rise to a new awareness. Exploring the psychogeography first defined by Guy Debord, this journey seeks to modulate reality by creating a disorientating undertow and a keen awareness of terroir. Venice by night is stimulating, along the lines of what Honoré de Balzac described as flânerie or “the gastronomy of the eye”.