Passaggio a Venezia. Inoperosità al lavoro in "Unguided Tour" di Susan Sontag

Starting with Susan Sontag’s film "Unguided Tour" (1983), which was shot in Venice, and following in the footsteps of photographer Sophie Calle and her reportage "Suite Vénitienne", this essay seeks to explore the possible correspondence between geographical space – the labyrinthine form of the city of Venice – and the space of narration. If the “flow-form” of "Unguided Tour" is shaped precisely by the “liquid” morphology of the lagoon, Sontag’s film shows how cinema has translated this dimension of transit – inscribed in the very act of inhabiting the city of Venice – Into a specific cinematic style: the travelogue style. Similarly, and this is the second point, this essay attempts to show how the mode of walking without origin or destination can be understood as a form of “inoperativeness at work”, that is the destructuring of a totalizing mode of travel marked – and justified – by a circuit established by a defined point of departure and final destination.