In May British street artist Banksy made a surprise appearance in Venice as an anonymous stall holder. He displayed a series of nine paintings in gold frames that composed a rather large puzzle-like image of a monstrous cruise ship in the Grand Canal surrounded by gondolas.
Somehow Banksy predicted reality: on Sunday morning a cruise ship crashed into a tourist boat in Venice while passing through the Giudecca canal.
The video shot by a witness and showing the 13-deck MSC Opera experiencing an engine failure is rather scary as it shows people on land fleeing,while the ship scrapes along the dockside, its siren blaring and hitting a tourist boat.
In a way it was a miracle that only five people were injured as things could have been much worse. The issue of cruise ship traffic should be solved as quickly as possible (could this be a project also for the architects at next year's Biennale?) as it is putting into danger water traffic, while eroding the underwater supports of buildings and polluting the lagoon.
Not too far from the place where the accident took place there is a house with a flag of the No Grandi Navi (No Large Ships) activist group flying from one of its windows, it is a reminder of what the majority of the local people think about the ships docking in Venice. Shame that one of the most topical modern artworks about the city – Banksy's – is not actually part of this year's Biennale.
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