Recognizing the scenic value of the city: ephemeral architecture as a medium to evoke urban memories

Today, “urban regeneration” is often argued as being the only way to revitalize those urban sections of cities that have been forgotten or, one way or another, trivialized by consumer culture and tourism, both of which assault cities and tend to turn them into open-air funfairs. Instead, we should be suggesting a process of “regenerating the collective memory” of the city through public exhibitions, which was the intention behind the Venice Biennale and other cultural events instituted in cities during the ’70s and ’80s. How can such ephemeral architecture in the form of a public exhibition help in this endeavor? In the late ’70s, public exhibitions in Venice paved the way to a transparent methodology aimed at unifying both the Venetian and international vocations of the city’s Biennale, railing against the prevalent tendency towards a standardization of exhibitions. This aspect, today lacking, is one of the reasons why Venice is now perceived as an open-air museum rather than an active theatre for collective memory. Recovery, study, and a re-drafting of this geography of nonexistent places could offer a scenario of what might be recouped in the future as a methodology for upcoming exhibitions, in order to tackle the danger of Venice becoming a passive museum.