The article's main concern is to analyse theoretical and artistic factors influencing the attempt by a group of undergraduate students (at the University of Warwick, UK) to produce a "performative mapping" of the city of Venice. In other words, it asks what kind of performance-based strategies might usefully be applied in the process of encountering and documenting--or creatively researching--an "unknown" but highly determined urban situation. Far less an evaluative assessment of pedagogy and outcomes, the overall aim of the article is to delineate possible points of reference in the development of an applied creative practice within the emerging discipline of urban intervention as performance research. (Contains 4 figures and 3 notes.)