10 - Negotiating the Future of Post-industrial Sites through Artistic Practices: The 1975 Venice Biennale Project on the Stucky Mill

Summary

Abstract

In 1975, the Venice Biennale invited thirty international artists to present proposals, in the form of works or projects, addressing the potential future uses of the abandoned Stucky mill on the island of Giudecca. The artistic responses, presented in the exhibition A proposito del Mulino Stucky in Venice, mostly failed to address the theme proposed by the Biennale, with the exception of the collective Environmedia. By examining the different levels of the artists’ engagement with the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Giudecca, this chapter argues that the initiative of the Venice Biennale proved to be an early testing ground for employing art in the decision-making process within post-industrial regeneration, demonstrating how socially engaged practices were able to promote public debate and grassroots participation.

Keywords: Venice Biennale; Giudecca; Stucky; art regeneration; post-industrial

Stucky is a grand building

At the bottom of the Giudecca

With crumbling walls

Which does not seem to resist

Looking at it like that

You wonder that it

May have been the bread of a family.

It provided work to many, many people

Who wore themselves out

And nothing is left of it.

An anger that closes

Your throat when you remember

Hopes and fears

In those bad times.

These lyrics, originally written in Venetian dialect by songwriter Gualtiero Bertelli in 1975, evoke the lives and collective memories tied to Mulino Stucky (fig. 10.1), a flour mill built between 1883 and 1897 on the island of Giudecca in the Venetian Lagoon. The imposing new factory was an unusual addition to the urban landscape: a monumental brick building with pinnacles, pointed arches, and a 35-metre tower that rivalled the tallest campaniles of Venice. The neo-Gothic design was initially opposed by the Commissione d’ornato (Town Hall Board of Ornaments) for its inconsistency with the stylistic features of the local urban landscape, but was ultimately approved, becoming the distinctive landmark of Giudecca. The factory had been for half a century the driving force of the small island but, after its closing in 1955 and two decades of abandonment, by 1975, it appeared as a colossal industrial ruin. In the same year that the song was composed, the Department of Visual Arts and Architecture of the Venice Biennale placed the derelict mill at the core of its programme La Biennale: Un laboratorio internazionale (The Biennale: An International Laboratory).