Andrea Liberovici's Acoustic Postcards Capture Venice's Sonic Identity

Composer Andrea Liberovici (b. 1962) has created a series of "Acoustic Postcards" for Venice, capturing the city's soundscape in one-minute audio clips. The project, titled Acoustic Postcards Venice, covers all six sestieri (Cannaregio, San Polo, Dorsoduro, Giudecca, etc.) and features voices, footsteps on masegni, echoes of courtyards, and sounds from friends like musicologist Veniero Rizzardi. It follows an eight-episode radio series VeneziAcustica – Diario di un cacciatore di suoni on Radio3. Liberovici, a transdisciplinary composer, uses a portable recorder to document the city's sonic body, aiming to reveal its "soul" and human connections. The postcards also respond to the exceptional acqua granda flood of November 12, 2019, which devastated Venice. Liberovici plans to release six postcards per sestiere by the first anniversary of the flood, second only to that of 1966. The work echoes his earlier vocal portraits from the late 1990s, exhibited at the Galleria Nazionale di Roma curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, where he manipulated voice samples of loved ones like Sanguineti and Paolo Poli. Liberovici believes Venice is a prototype of a future city due to its forced human encounters and altered time perception, advocating for listening as a regenerative tool in a visually saturated world.