Venice Biennale and the IUAV August 2023

Venice 2023…

A visit to Venice to attend the inaugural AFRAHUAN session at the Teatro Piccolo at the Arsenale as part of the Carnivale Proceedings of the Venice Biennale proved an apt occasion to visit and view Venice in full exhibition and tourist mode.

Venice is indeed a city like no other. No cars, no bicycles, lots of passageways, canals, and tourists. One adjusts to this city of walkers, traders and tourists all jostling for space in alleyways that are literally not wide enough to swing a cat. The green canal water both enticing and goading the unwary walker to come to its banks.

A walk to the Arsenale gave a better viewpoint of the wide vista of Venice as a series of islands with canals as fingers out to the grand canal. The adaptive reuse of various parts of this still living city is clear. The Arsenale itself remains the home of the Italian navy and a museum dedicated to the armed force still exists with the occasional boat dropping by.

The main part of the old Arsenale building however now has been occupied by the architecture biennale, this year curated by Lesley Lokko and involving your writer and a wide set of architects, writers and artistes with Africa focused research. The ‘carnivale’ exhibition is no mean feat, a work of immense dedication, creativity and focus. The curation is superb and content more than can be taken in at one go. One easily gets immersed in what it offers up with names one knows and has heard of contributing to this rich tapestry of art. Fortunately the accompanying catalogue means one can refer back to installations and events missed or glossed over in the viewing of the exhibition.

AFRAUHN AT THE CARNIVALE…

The African Architectural and Urban History Network (AFRAUHN) had its debut at a session at the Carnivale at the Biennale. Curator Lesley Lokko introduced our session which had two parts, the first involved speakers Ikem Okoye (Delaware, USA),  Kuukuwa Manful (Michigan University, USA) and Neal Shasore (London School of Architecture), with Ola Uduku (Liverpool University) chairing, where the session focused on a discussion on the remit of AFRAUHN which is to help encourage and advocate for Architectural Research in Africa, and support new generations of indigenous historians and researchers in Architectural History and urbanism. After Ikem Okoye’s introduction both Kuukuwa and Neal were able to discuss their different approaches to, and hopes for Africa-related Architectural Research.

The second session chaired by Huda Tayob (Unversity of Manchester) involved all speakers from the earlier session and also Murray Fraser (University College London). This session was a roundtable where the speakers responded to Huda Tayob’s questions which considered specific issues and challenges to scholarship in African Architectural History and its situatedness within the wider context of global research and challenging normative notions of historical research and scholarship.

The entire session was recorded and will be published by the Venice Architecture Biennale before the end of September 2023. Due to the events related to air traffic control problems in the UK unfortunately several of the invited AFRAUHN team were unable to attend the session, and others arrived late due to flight delays. It is hoped we will be able to include their recorded contributions to the final video output from the session.

IUAV (University of Venice)

On Wednesday, the day after the Carnivale discussion we were fortunate to reconvene at a meeting room at the IUAV (University of Venice), thanks to Dr Jacopo Galli, who has researched into African modernism and was involved in the curation of the exhibition Africa Big Change, in Milan and has worked with Manchester School of Architecture on the analysis of schools in West Africa. IUAV has sites across Venice, and we met at the C’a Tron campus, a Venetian villa owned by the wealthy Tron Family before being gifted to the State.  Post meeting tours took us to the Carlo Scarpa-influenced main campus of the IUAV, a repurposed convent which still has parts which are owned by the church. The campus also has a significant architectural library including book volumes and periodicals accessible and in regular use by its students.  

Unlike the exclusive arrival to the watery city a few days earlier, the trip back to the airport was by airport water taxi, which proved to be a bus trip stopping at many of the archipelago of islands which constitute Venice, including Murano, famous for its glass works and San Michael. Approaching Marco Polo Airport Venice by water seemed a very apt way to leave the city.