Venice – a live Performance by This Window is a very rare occasion

A rare performance in Venice. The bells are the actual sounds of Venice in full voice. Piazza San Marco (in English = St Mark’s Square) is the main public square of Venice, where it is locally simply known as “the Piazza” and is the key part of the social, religious and political centre of Venice is a cacophony of sounds.

Venice Highlights:

There is so much art in Venice to see – I must admit I neglected most of the galleries except the Guggenheim (Palazzo Venier dei Leoni) where Peggy Guggenheim lived and which has a couple of great Pollocks, my favourite being Two, 1943–45 and a typical Bacon (Study for Chimpanzee) in the European Art exhibition. It was also great to see a slashed canvas of the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968). The simple act of slashing a canvas would now be a pointless exercise but during his time this was a dramatic statement about art and painting.

These views have been represented in paint and photographs a billion times – they are common to generations of travellers and the walls in galleries around the world groan from the weight of their presence.

We all have bigger audiences and the distribution of music is cheap but the question we need to ask is – Are we better for it?

The democracy of releasing material has punched a hole right through the mainstream record industry, the business models of the 20th century no longer apply and ironically the ‘Home Tapers’ philosophy and strategy of DIY has suddenly become the mainstream itself. It is no longer viable for major labels to invest and promote new stars. YouTube, SoundCloud, ReverbNation et al, have enabled the artist to become creator, producer, distributor and manager. The object as product and art, the cassette, has become replaced by the file. The freedom we craved in the 1970’s has now actually happened. We all have bigger audiences and the distribution of music is cheap but the question we need to ask is – Are we better for it?

Cassette Culture 1989 – 2009 by This Window