Festival Internazionale
di Letteratura a Venezia
10 — 14 aprile 2024
The year 2024 will mark the 700th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo (1254-1324). Ca’ Foscari University, in collaboration with the City of Venice and the Venice2000 Foundation, has promoted a national committee coordinated by Ca’ Foscari Rector, Professor Tiziana Lippiello. The Ca’ Foscari research team, headed by Professor Eugenio Burgio, is organising a prestigious international conference to be held in Venice from 11 to 14 September 2024, at which the new digital edition of Devisement dou monde/Milione will be launched.
The team has also planned a series of seminars in collaboration with various Italian universities and lectures at the Accademia dei Lincei, the University of Rome La Sapienza, and other universities. Marco Polo was a clear example of peaceful interchange between distant worlds and cultures.
Incroci di civiltà will contribute to the project by presenting, in the dialogues that will take place during the festival, various examples of travel-literature and encounters with different countries, people and cultures.
In a preview during the festival, on 11 April, the artist Lena Herzog will present her new work “Any War Any Enemy”, an exhibition project of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage to coincide with the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Ca’ Foscari professors Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri.
It includes murals, engravings, monitors, and an installation. “Any War Any Enemy” forms an ideal “diptych” with her previous project “Last Whispers: Immersive Oratorio for Vanishing Voices, Collapsing Universes and, a Falling Tree”, shown two years ago at Ca’ Foscari.
Both projects focus on the theme of extinction: “Any War Any Enemy” considers the loss of our planet as a result of a potentially catastrophic nuclear war.
The project as a whole is a painful cry for the misery that every conflict inevitably causes and a heartbreaking –albeit poetic– reflection on war and all the conflicts, past and present, that afflict too many countries in the world. During the preview, the volume Lena Herzog by Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri, published by Skirà, will also be presented.
Since its first edition, each year Incroci di civiltà has awarded the most significant author attending the festival with a prize, originally titled Bauer – Ca’ Foscari, today Prize Incroci – Musei Civici di Venezia.
Listed below are the winners of the past editions:
The giovani Incroci - Albero d’Oro prize was awarded to Igiaba Scego, Ghada Abdel Aal, Mariana Enriquez, Eugenia Rico, and Paulina Flores in the previous years.
The book series ‘Incroci di civiltà’, which was launched nel 2018 in collaboration with Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, publishes guest authors of the Incroci di civiltà Festival who are little known or have never been translated in Italian, as recommended by the professors of the two Language Departments at Ca’ Foscari University. In 2023 Telegramma e Fatima e altri racconti by Diana Hambardzumyan was published by Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina and edited by Sona Haroutyunian.
Other Title in the series:
From 9 February a new edition of Verso Incroci, the traditional programme to approach the topics and authors of the International Literary Festival Incroci di civiltà, takes place, promoted by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, with the collaboration of Dedica Festival Pordenone, Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Venezia Legge i Balcani.
Waterlines is an artistic and literary residency project run jointly by Ca’ Foscari International College and the Venice Foundation, in partnership also with San Servolo srl until 2O22. By combining literature with other arts, the project is meant to reaffirm the role of Venice as a place of cultural production through an artistic residency experience.
Waterlines invites authors from all over the world to reside in Santa Marta Camplus of and interact with the public and the students of the International College, a Ca’ Foscari excellence programme, within the spaces offered by the Camplus, the Venice Foundation, and Ca’ Foscari University.
After Billy Kahora, Hanif Kureishi, Nataša Dragnic ́, Mayank Austen Soofi, Amin Maalouf, Nathalie Handal, Damir Imamovic ́, Igiaba Scego, Dayanita Singh, Michele Gazich, Maaza Mengiste and Josh “Socalled” Dolgin, Ngu ̃gi ̃ wa Thiong’o, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Albert Ostermaier, Guadalupe Nettel, Frank Westerman, Christina Viragh, Christopher Bollen, Ulla Lenze, Boris Chersonskij and Jonathan Coe.
In the previous editions, writers in residence have worked with various artists and professionals, including Serena Nono, Giorgia Fiorio, Matteo Alemanno, Lucio Schiavon, Michela Lorenzano, Fabio Visentin, Marco Borghi, Domenico Casagrande, Luigi Armiato, Fiora Gaspari, Marco Lamberti, Rino Bianchi, Claudio Rado, Sabina Bakholdina, Alberto Belli and Valentina Talamini, Daniela Iride Murgia, Gholam Najafi, Michele De Vita Conti, Nicola Moretti, Alvise Bittente, Marco Castelli, Roberto Tiraboschi, Leona Stahlmann and Usama Al Shahmani, besides professors and experts such as Marco Borghi, Domenico Casagrande, Luigi Armiato, Fiora Gaspari, Margherita Cannavacciuolo, Alice Favaro, Lucio Capitani and Gregory Dowling.
Further information can be found at waterlinesproject. com and on the dedicated Facebook page.
LEI is the Ca' Foscari University of Venice project dedicated to female leadership and employability of young women. The project was launched by Ca' Foscari Career Service in December 2017 to promote a culture of inclusion, female leadership and support young female students entering the world of work. Over the course of the year, LEI Project organizes many events with prominent women from Italian and international culture. Since 2019, LEI Project supports the participation of a female author hosted by the festival Incroci di Civiltà.
Starting from 2020, Progetto LEI launched LEI Magazine, which narrates the initiatives organized by Progetto LEI, the most innovative corporate projects supporting female growth and the stories of professionals from various fields. The Magazine is aimed at the Ca' Foscari community, businesses and local institutions. An important focus, through the Lei&Mondo column, is dedicated to international literature and culture.
The LEI project, as part of Incroci di Civiltà, supported the participation of the following authors: Paolina Flores, Ayesha Arruna Attah, Sepideh Siyāvashi, Nasim Marashi.
