Insurrezione Antimimetica Lagunare

Insurrezione Antimimetica Lagunare was an attempt to raise questions born out of the venetian mistreatment of its ecosystem, revolving around a number of intertwined ecological and sociopolitical issues. The shirts – central element of the project – are inspired by the barena, a kind of floating island or a micro-ecosystem that today covers only the 8% of the Lagoon, compared to the 25% of a century ago, due to the erosion of our environment. Our actions were antimimetic; a dysfunctional camouflage directly extracted from aerial photographs of the barene and tied to the Lagoon’s hunters. It is impossible to blend in the Venetian tourist crowds through this absurd device, unsuited to our times. The shirt becomes a symbol of a resilient heritage, impossible to erase and therefore marginalized. The project adopts a performative nature, complemented by a political statement and several actions in the public space.

photo credits: Alessio Graldi

Atensión!

Atensión! is a bill posting campaign made mobile thanks to hand-made carts made with recycled materials, developed by Barena Bianca, supported and produced by We are here Venice. Four specific messages regarding the survival of Venice and its Lagoon will be circulated during the sparkling period of the Art Biennale.
Barena Bianca processed historical data of various negative trends associated with the Venetian Lagoon since the XVII Century,transforming the information into abstractimages colour gradients – via special software. Four statistical sources and four posters in which each phase of the gradient corresponds to a value that intersects the others, forming shades of color that become more or less intense depending on the proportions of the represented data.
Each poster sets a dialogue between quantitative data and a phrase by great thinkers of the past, in an unsetting mirrored image of the romantic projection of poets and philosophers that gets distorted into the scientific and statistical observation of the future both in Venice and globally in the age of Anthropocene and climate’s Great Acceleration.
The work is by its nature versatile, leaning both on an installative and a performative side. A first performance, itinerating in the neighborhood of Castello, was held at the opening of the show “Supermercato” at the Serra dei Giardini of Venice, contemporary to the 58. Art Biennale.

Muevete Muevete

Muevete Muevete Barena was a didactic happening produced by We Are Here Venice that took place in Venice from Palazzo delle Zattere (V-A-C Foundation) to Campo Santo Stefano. 60 venetian children (fifth grade of Scuola Elementare B. Canal) were invited to realize a festive parade bringing with them a 30-meters long “anti-mimetic” textile support with a pattern realized from the Barene in Campalto. Refusing to surrender to exploitative logics leading to ecological and sociological downfall, fighting not to disappear, the autochthonous kids – almost an exotic species to tourists and visitors, who live Venice as a dead city and open-air museum – gave life to a metaphorical mythical animal of the lagoon appearing in a crossway of Venice’s touristic center (North to Rialto, East to San Marco) Once in Campo Santo Stefano, three big collective drawings were realized by the children, portraying elements of the venetian lagoon with chalks in frames composed by the Barena squares through a deconstruction and reconstruction of the textile.

Barena Primavera-Estate

Barena Primavera-Estate was a workshop developed in collaboration with Giorgia Cereda and produced and coordinated by We Are Here Venice. During the World’s Ocean Day, 20 Venetian kids recycled old shirts, about to be abandoned, in order to become living symbols of the Lagoon. Each kid composed his own image on the clay tablet before stamping it on the shirt, using plants and flowers from the Barene, giving life to a personal interpretation of the Lagoon’s ecosystem. The video, through the voice of Francesco Da Mosto – Venetian architect, historian and BBC presenter – that accompanies images from the workshop and the exploration of the Barene of Campalto, purposely mocks the style of a commercial that does not seek to sell anything. Rather, the “mock-mercial” strives to encourage to adopt a set of ideals necessary in order to tackle the downwards spiral of the Venetian ecosystem, in which both the resident population and the amount of Barene declined of about 70% during the last century. Each of us can be a Barena.

photo credits: Linda Zennaro