The Voice of the Lagoon
year:
2025
Intertwined within the city’s history and commercial economy, the Venetian lagoon is indistinguishable from the Serenissima. Supporting its inhabitant’s life and beliefs, the body of water constitutes a naturecultural apparatus composed of canals and flood control systems, thus blurring the limits between the natural and the human. Since the settlements of the first occupants, the fragile symbiosis between Venice and the flow of brackish water has challenged the rigid conception of urban settlement towards a fluid comprehension at odds with usual dichotomies: the Venetian lagoon is both natural and artificial, human and non-human; it meanders between water and soil, sea and land.
Composed as an ensemble of marshes, artificial coasts, microbial lives, birds, fishing boats and algaes, among many others, the complex nature of the lagoon forms a hybrid environment. To sustain the livability of Venice through time, several efforts at understanding the water ecology have aimed to grasp its hybrid intelligence. Since the first tide gauge monitoring station built in 1909, scientists work on the mediation of its complex fluctuation through a growing networked system of sensors. In addition, current nature restoration projects and experiments search to recreate the subtle variations of its water dynamics in the context of rising climatic threats. This series portrays the mirrored relationship between the Venetian lagoon, its ecosystem and the attempts at mediating it. It seeks to imagine how the liquid body would reflect on itself, through its own voice.
location:
Venice, Italyteam:
N/Ayear:
2025
commissioner:
self-initiatedIntertwined within the city’s history and commercial economy, the Venetian lagoon is indistinguishable from the Serenissima. Supporting its inhabitant’s life and beliefs, the body of water constitutes a naturecultural apparatus composed of canals and flood control systems, thus blurring the limits between the natural and the human. Since the settlements of the first occupants, the fragile symbiosis between Venice and the flow of brackish water has challenged the rigid conception of urban settlement towards a fluid comprehension at odds with usual dichotomies: the Venetian lagoon is both natural and artificial, human and non-human; it meanders between water and soil, sea and land.
Composed as an ensemble of marshes, artificial coasts, microbial lives, birds, fishing boats and algaes, among many others, the complex nature of the lagoon forms a hybrid environment. To sustain the livability of Venice through time, several efforts at understanding the water ecology have aimed to grasp its hybrid intelligence. Since the first tide gauge monitoring station built in 1909, scientists work on the mediation of its complex fluctuation through a growing networked system of sensors. In addition, current nature restoration projects and experiments search to recreate the subtle variations of its water dynamics in the context of rising climatic threats. This series portrays the mirrored relationship between the Venetian lagoon, its ecosystem and the attempts at mediating it. It seeks to imagine how the liquid body would reflect on itself, through its own voice.
