Venice, Venice

Venice Beach, Los Angeles and Little Venice, London provide the basis for a series of reflections that explore the way the city is hardwired into a collective imaginary. These very different reproductions of Venice share the underlying principles that correspond to the economic and ­political aspiration of the modern city: carnivality and staging; the hypnogogic dream space and travel; guild capitalism and spectatorship. The enduring references to Venice that exist at the heart of Los Angeles and London speak of a desire for the sovereign city state and reflect a wider move to a new feudalism that increasingly characterizes the western metropolis.