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CONCLUDING IN VENICE :
This book is the consequence of the first lockdown imposed by a pandemic and of time suddenly so strangely distended. The luxury of an interior journey, so delectable after many years of feverish activity. What is more, since the rhythm of imposing and then lifting lockdown measures has allowed work to gradually resume, I have been experiencing some difficulties in getting back into the habit. Yet a final text is needed to complete the succession of images and words.
It was in Venice where the first trip for more than a year enabled me to take a little distance from everyday life and to conclude the interlude of the book. While working on the terrace an unlikely event was unfolding: the Sensa being prepared before my eyes, this ceremony of the marriage of Venice to the sea that has been held in Venice every year for more than a thousand years. Yet a scene that failed to conjure up, as in the paintings, the appearance of the Bucentaure, the unsteady golden galley that conveyed the doge, the prelate and other local dignitaries, or the hundred gondolas. Due to decadence and virus there were just seven gondolas in all, including the golden one for the betrothed and the flagship black gondola. “Ti sposiamo mare, in segno di vero e perpetuo dominio”, and who dominates who in this affair? The question remains open but the sea seems to be quietly taking precedence. Nevertheless, this totally symbolic perpetuation of an antique ritual, even in a derisory avatar, remains quite touching. Unless it is simply that it amuses me because I see in it my own story in terms of my struggle to glorify craftsmanship, a mode of production that is now obsolete?
This is just the story of one more book in a world in which there are already so many. Too many books, too much of everything… But books have given me so much, since my childhood, that to write one seems to be a legitimate homage to this practice that is now also almost obsolete. I devoted a lot of energy to producing a website to sell my products. For this purpose I developed a way of presenting them in little “mises en scène” or compositions that I then photographed, to the point where this has become a genuine mean of expression for me. As to the objects I created, they departed and continue to depart every day to live their life out there in the world and that is just fine by me. So a book to spend some time explaining the approach behind all this activity seemed a good idea to me. It took me 6 instalments, 647 pages and a lot of deleted pages to arrive at an acceptable synthesis of this long practice that at the same time retained a sufficient degree of disorganisation to preserve the fantasy.
Tomorrow the story continues, this is just a freeze frame.
Brussels, may 25, 2021
Excerpt from « Concluding in Venise » fascicule 6 of the book
“By Agnès Emery Par Agnès Emery”