Michel Butor's
Description of San Marco (1963) is an unusual book; an unorthodox intermingling of overheard dialogue from the iconic Venetian square in question, thick descriptions of persons and buildings, along with sober historical information. In the original, each genre of information is assigned a distinct typography of its own, hence interacting like voices in a play.
Six decades later, the artist Giovanna Silva stumbled upon an English translation of the French essayist's queer text in an archive at the New York Public Library. Returning to Venice, she cast her eye to the square and its surrounds, an iconic space at once populated by signs of contemporary life, but also astonishingly unchanged.
Giovanna Silva lives and works in Milan. As a
photographer, she exposed at the Venice Biennale 2006 her work about the city of Bogotà, Colombia. She is the author of
Desertions, a chronicle of an american trip with designer
Enzo Mari. From 2005-2007 she contributed to
Domus and since september 2007 until september 2011 she was the Photo Editor of
Abitare. She photographed Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid for the Abitare's special issues
Being Renzo Piano and
Being Zaha Hadid, 6 month experience of architecture in the making. In 2011 she published the book,
Orantes, ed. Quodlibet. In 2012 she published
Narratives/Relazioni: Baghdad, Green Zone, Red Zone, Babylon,
Mousse Publishing.
She is in the editorial board of
San Rocco Magazine. She is the editor of
Humboldt Books. She has a column on Doppiozero.