@ Venice 1984-2024
From Umanità Nova
October 29, 2024
On Friday October 18th, the 84/24 Venezia anarchica exhibition was inaugurated with a presentation seminar in the IUAV university library . It was a series of initiatives that revolve around a rich photographic and documentary exhibition curated by Elena Roccaro, a former student at the Venetian university, who dedicated her thesis to the International Anarchist Meeting that took place in the lagoon city exactly forty years ago and that represented a particularly important moment of comparison between thousands of participants from all over the world.
In addition to the exhibition, the interesting calendar of the event was presented (curated by Roccaro herself in collaboration with Professor Sara Marini, the Centro Studi Libertari/Archivio Pinelli of Milan, the IUAV Student Senate, Franco Bunčuga, Fabio Santin, Marco Pandin, the About association) which aims to "explore the choreographies of dissent, with insights into libertarian themes and practices in the artistic and cultural sphere". All the events can be easily consulted on the website of the Centro studi libertari ( https://centrostudilibertari.it/it/venezia-84-24-evento ) which, it is worth remembering, was among the promoters of the 1984 International Meeting together with the CIRA of Lausanne (then in Geneva) and the Anarchos Institute of Montreal. And it was the Study Centre itself that provided all the precious material for the exhibition (photographs, posters, brochures, publications) with which visitors can easily get an idea of what happened forty years ago in the squares and streets of Venice.
At the seminar – after the institutional greetings, those of Lorenzo Pezzica for the Centro studi libertari and the introduction of Roccaro – the speakers Fabio Santin, Antonio Senta and Tomás Ibáñez took the floor. Unfortunately, Marianne Enckell of CIRA in Lausanne was absent.
Santin retraced all the work of reappropriation of the relationship between art and anarchy that was carried out on the occasion of Venice84, when dozens of works created by anarchist artists or, in any case, those that had and have to do with themes linked to libertarian sensitivity were recovered, catalogued and reproduced for the exhibition. In general, artists such as Enrico Baj, Alik Cavaliere, Arturo Schwarz were remembered up until the birth, in 2000, of the magazine ApARTe°.
Antonio Senta has condensed in a few minutes the adventure of anarchist thought and its organizational forms that have always revolved around editorial production ("newspapers as an organizational tool"). A child of the Age of Enlightenment, anarchism has always been concerned not to neglect its educational dimension in the broad sense: not only pedagogy, therefore, but cultural production as the theoretical and practical backbone of the movement.
Finally, Ibáñez spoke of the 1984 International Meeting as «one of those great events imbued with a strange magic , which remain imprinted in the hearts of all those who experienced them». Ibáñez retraced the history of anarchism and the anarchist movement, before and after Venice84, through some fundamental historical stages: from the Spanish epic of the 1930s through the 1960s, the French May, the 1970s, the anti-globalization movement between the two centuries, up to the most recent realities of struggle (from environmentalism to the queer movement, etc.). The result is a rich, heterogeneous picture, in which the theory and practice of freedom have been embraced by movements that are not specifically anarchist but which, in fact, behaved or behave as such.
On the other hand, and here we conclude this brief account of a beautiful Venetian afternoon, the thousands of comrades who in 1984 decided to gather in the Lagoon wanted first of all to think together, with incredible foresight, about how to ferry anarchism into the new millennium also in light of the exhilarating and dramatic experiences of the previous twenty years. And then we must not forget that, in five years, the Berlin Wall would fall and the structures and instruments of domination would radically change in many respects. It was necessary to reflect, therefore, on how valid the "tools" at our disposal still were, and on what, if anything, needed to be updated.
Venice84 was certainly a watershed for all those who wondered (and still wonder) what are the most fruitful and viable ways to fight against power and its many facets. To quote Tomás Ibáñez, that event "powerfully contributed to keeping anarchism in motion and this is where its marvelous and indelible merit lies."
Alberto La Via