Fishing For Fishies was born during the Arteria Festival curated
by Sabina Oroshi in collaboration with the Lapidarium Museum in
Novigrad, Croatia. It is an underwater sculpture previously realised
for the culinary installation Fishing Without Fish and subsequently
placed near the delta of the river Mirna during a one-day workshop
in which it was possible to discuss the ecological aspects that
characterise and unite the Venice Lagoon and the Mirna delta
area. Made with materials from the river and components that are
nutritious for the local fauna, the sculpture aims to energise fish,
birds and organisms that have suffered from rapid changes over the
years, such as intensive fishing, water pollution, the breeding of new
species, morphological changes by humans and alterations in sea.

Serviteur Muet is a collaboration between Barena Bianca and Sugar Koka, whose shared interest in culinary art and socio-ecological issues related to the Venetian Lagoon have encouraged experiments with new edible scenarios in the garden of Palazzo Venier dei Leonial at Guggenheim of Venice. Drawing inspiration from the construction of space through light and color in Edmondo Bacci’s paintings, the artists created an installation constructed with irregular levels made of butter and sugar. Transparent, semi-glasslike surfaces, alternated with bright, rotund shapes merge with the lagoon’s cartography and landscapes. Foams, creams, gummy bears, pearls, and deceptive-looking herbs are the fruits of a sweet and sour shrub, of which soon little to nothing will remain. It melts, breaks, feeds us, and finally disappears.

The project “Never let me Gò, Tunaight”, in collaboration with Ilaria Genovesio, intends to draw a parallel between the cities of Istanbul and Venice, through the identification of one or more extinct and alien marine species that the Sea of Marmara and the marine area of the northern Adriatic Sea and the Venetian Lagoon share. Translating the research and analysis of these elements into an artistic and visual language allowed us to ignite debates between Istanbul and Venice around urgent and shared issues such as pollution, globalisation, climate change, overfishing, food, tourism and biodiversity. The project took shape with a series of preliminary researches conducted in Venice, aimed at identifying the marine species in question in collaboration with museums, researchers, fishermen and local fish traders. In the second half of June, for a couple of weeks, the project moved to Istanbul with the support of the artist run space PASAJ, which accompanied us in the development of the research and in particular in building relationships with local organisations, initiatives and personalities that were fundamental to enrich the project presented in July in the art centre Barin Han. 

During our time in PASAJ, we created mobile and flying sculptures depicting a goby (gò in Venetian), a tuna and various sea walnuts – an invasive ctenophore that thrives in warm waters and damages local marine fauna. Two iconic fishes, the Gò for Venice and the Tuna for Istanbul, which are present in both waters and share a glorious past and a rather critical and precarious present. In contrast, the sea walnuts are the image of a contaminated present, at odds with the fragile balance of the seas, and encroaching on fragile ecosystems such as the Venice Lagoon and the Bosphorus in a harmful manner. 

Walking together with the two fishes towards the top of the island of Büyükada allowed us to observe from above what Istanbul is today, its waters and its inhabitants. At the same time, we established a bond between these two species and consequently between the two cities. A bond that will continue and develop over the next few years thanks to Ilaria Genovesio’s collaboration on the project and the support of PASAJ and Artport Making Waves.

In 2021 Barena Bianca conceived the idea of a metaphoric “Primordial Broth”, a philosophic recipe in which the broth ecompasses all the ingredients that constitute it. The first version of it derived from the venetian lagoon, and it went as an artistic companion for Fiona Middleton and Pietro Consolandi’s essay “Re-Sourcing the Strands of Life: Biocentric politics in the primordial broth”, published by Strelka Mag. In the essay, the authors argue that the primordial soup, from which life emerged after a mysterious event still discussed by the scientific community, represents a key moment of interspecies collaboration in which different forms of life interacted in a chaotic way towards a common goal. In this sense, the very birth of life can be considered as the greatest political achievement reached by an interspecies assembly. From this standpoint, we can see ecosystems as a common heritage that was built by following assemblies of forms of life: the resources that were accumulated through millions of years of biotic action cannot therefore be exploited for the well-being of humans alone. 

To embody this philosophical idea, Barena Bianca developed a broth that includes elements that have passed through the lagoon in different stages of its life: primordial, historical or contemporary. The lagoon itself is in fact a highly dynamic ecosystem, that was shaped through history by more-than-human agents such as the rivers and the sea, and by human action – responsible for its current state, more and more similar to a branch of the Adriatic Sea. 

In this primordial broth, there is no hierarchy and all elements contribute towards the final result, in which many of the participants are disguised or dissolved: but their presence constitutes what the work’s fruitor will experience in the moment of tasting. 

The broth is by nature site-specific: if the first version aimed to embody the different phases of the lagoon, the second – developed during Piantagruél 2021 – created a relationship with the Cavallino peninsula, shaped by the diversion of rivers and that embodies the three souls of the countryside, the lagoon and the sea in a narrow strip of sediments and sands.

“Come va lì? Qui…” (“How is it there? Here…”), part of the global program WE ARE OCEAN, is a collaborative critical geography workshop developed by Barena Bianca for Venice’s inhabitants and those around the world who coexist with the same problems . Through a shared reflection on the threats that unite us,the workshop creates an idea of geography that does not see the globe from the point of view of the division into nation-states, but rather as an array of creatures facing common challenges. Thus, we learn that Venice can also be found in Jakarta and New York, Kyoto and Sao Paulo, and that none of us is alone in the struggle for a habitable future.

The digital map, a work that summarizes all the contributions sent by friends and allies from around the world to the students of Venice, is made in collaboration with the artist Donato Spinelli. It will grow in the coming years to map a  network of solidarity in continuous expansion. Contributions will be shared with students participating in the physical workshop, which will be held in Venice as soon as the ongoing health crisis allows it, and a series of response “postcards” will be sent around the world, creating a direct connection between “there” and “here”. 

The workshop is produced by ARTPORT_making waves as the Venetian iteration of their global programme WE ARE OCEAN, an official Action of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development. Fundamental local and research support in Venice is provided by We are here Venice, and the workshop is hosted by TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space and CNR-ISMAR (the Institute of Marine Science of Italy’s National Council of Research).

Onde (“Waves”) is a methodology of research through the act of walking, rather than a work of art in itself. The idea was inspired by the sister project Ziarah Utara, carried out by Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett in Jakarta from 2018 onwards, in the context of the global program WE ARE OCEAN, curated by ARTPORT_making waves. The first walk was made possible by the MobilityFirst! Grant awarded by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) In an attempt to create a direct connection with the lagoon ecosystem, and specifically with the Murazzi of Lido and Pellestrina during the first walk, we created a small luminous mobile sculpture: a red wave that lights up in places charged with meaning, where the presence of the lagoon, the sea, or some of its particular inhabitants is perceived. It works by connecting to the past, perceiving the energy of the present or the possibility of future events. 

The light forced us to stop at some points to understand where this energy was coming from, to photograph it and understand it better. The slowness of walking is essential to be able to feel a territory through one’s body, unlike when crossing it quickly with other vehicles, and allows one to deviate, stop and retrace one’s steps. The light also served to meet people who are experts in the territory and ecosystem, connected to these places, learning from them and portraying them with the sculpture. 

By its nature, the project is longer in duration, lending itself to being repeated several times to understand changes in an area, broken into multiple sections, and used to learn from the inhabitants of these places. A first presentation of the exploration of the Murazzi was celebrated during World Earth Day, April 22, 2021, with a talk hosted by TBA21-Academy and Ocean Space with Tita Salina, Irwan Ahmett (from Jakarta), Åsa Andersson, Carl Michael von Hauswolff and curator of ARTPORT_making waves Anne-Marie Melster (Stockholm), creating a bridge between the three places connected by common issues. Next stops will be the Northern Lagoon, from Jesolo to Cavallino and inland, from Lova to Chioggia and an exploration of the saltmarshes in the Campalto area. 

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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.

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.

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. 

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.