I've been busy. Scratching the surface of the Venetian façade.
Migropolis a searching, feeling revelation of the city's underside. Investigating lives, deaths, trade agreements, illegal immigration and movements of peoples across Africa, Asia, and through the "gateway to Europe"It is an interesting and unoriginal observation that Venice is a city of false appearances. The palazzos facing the grand canal have their masks on, hiding structures, wooden beams, crumbling plaster. Piazzas and waterways are full of colour, byzantine, baroque, gothic, romantic, and gondolas idle around like the props of a city sized theatre.
I'm scared now, this is a city full of ghosts, but they are not the ones we all imagine, Casanova, Titian, Marco Polo, a hundred murdered Doges... they are ghosts, Senegalese, Bangladeshi, Albanian, of those whose boats capsized in the adriatic, and hung from prison roof beams at the prospect of deportation.
It's depressing so it's avoided, and theme park Venice captivates us again.
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