In the Outskirts of Venice II – Dans les faubourgs de Venise II – Alla periferia di Venezia II
Rina Sherman
Cities & Elsewhere – Villes & Ailleurs : tableaux mouvants – Slow Cinema
HD, couleurs, 20 min, k éditeur, Paris, 2017
In this second moving tableau about Venice, I explore the lives of women in the city, interweaving Poem No. 24 from « Terze rima » (1575) by Veronica Franco—poet, humanitarian, and courtesan.
Venice is a city built on water, a place that feels eternal yet bears the visible marks of a fragile and transient existence. Each time I cross the Via della Libertà—the bridge connecting the centro storico to the mainland—I am struck by a wave of melancholy. Especially at night, entering this suspended world feels like stepping into a dream, timeless yet quietly eroding.
My first encounter with Venice, in 1989, took me to the distant streets of the Castello sestiere. I remember wandering until I stumbled upon a terrace that resembled a private home more than a restaurant. The owner, who spoke no English, served me an unforgettable plate of pasta, lingering nearby with an air of quiet curiosity as I ate. That moment has stayed with me, like a vignette preserved in amber.
Venice is a city of perpetual movement—the ebb and flow of water defining its rhythm. The lagoon’s milky green currents and the canals’ opaque turquoise tones shape a world of sailors and ferrymen, journeying between islands in gondolas, water taxis, and vaporetti. Yet my own connection to Venice lies not in its bustling waterways, but in its quieter peripheries.
I am drawn to its outskirts and islands, pausing in secluded corners where time feels suspended. These floating landscapes, shaped by the slow erosion of history, seem to exist beyond the grasp of the present. Here, the interplay of stillness and decay evokes an eternal choreography of transformation.
Through the Cities & Elsewhere collection, I focus on capturing the immediacy of time—on immersing myself in the here and now, and on translating the visceral sensation of presence into a visual and poetic language.
Cities & Elsewhere – Villes & Ailleurs : tableaux mouvants – Slow Cinema
In Cities and Elsewhere, a collection of moving tableaux, I draw inspiration from the traditions of Louis XIV’s tableaux vivants, Delsarte’s poses plastiques, and later performance practices, as well as from landscape painting and early landscape photography.
My work as a performance artist with Possession Arts in Johannesburg in the early 1980s also informs the static scenes filmed in Cities. Our tableaux vivants, such as Schreber’s Chicken and Rain, Steam and Speed, were staged performances inspired by the transformation of everyday scenes and durational performances, drawing from artists like Philip Glass, the Wooster Group, Elizabeth LeCompte, Spalding Gray, and Benjamin Patterson.
In the first two pieces of Cities, the images present everyday landscapes with little or no movement and minimal sound: a door closing, the cry of a passing seagull, footsteps fading away… Over time, the interplay between film, painting, and photography shifts the reference from everyday reality to other dimensions of existence. These tableaux vivants emerge from this transformation, creating a living narration of the static landscape through a real-time choreographed gesture.
In this collection, Rina Sherman explores her deep connection to landscapes through a series of urban and rural cine-poems. As in Heraclitus’s river, where the water never flows the same way twice, the movement of these landscapes extends infinitely (2017).
Crédit photo couverture : Rina Sherman / ADAGP
collection – Cities & Elsewhere – Villes & Ailleurs : tableaux mouvants – Slow Cinema
duration – 20 min
genre – documentary, poetic, experimental / format 1 hour
classification – G – general public, specialised, Venice, Venise, Venezia, Italy, Lagoon, masks, canals, bridges
year – 2017
language – English
country – France
format – 1920×1080, 25fps, 1.66:1, sound mono / stereo
VOVA – English voice
contact sales– distribution – public screenings
values: document, history, portrait, educational, research, music, opéra
hashtag : #kediteur #Venice #slowcinema #opera #cities #elsewhere #Venezia #Italy #rinasherman #tableaumouvant
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