Adelita Husni Bey

Adelita Husni Bey

Il Fiato del Suolo, forum theatre, 2025, 60 min
In collaboration with Coro Operaio delle Voci dal Mondo (Voices of the World Workers’ Choir) – Venezia Fonte, Treviso, Spilimbergo. 
Musical direction: Giuseppina Casarin.

With the participation of: Ngalaha Noel, Giuseppe Tosatto, Giuseppe Palmieri, Pandora Climate Lab

Performed by: Lisa Boni, Giulio Canestrelli, Roberta Da Soller, Angelica Leo, Chiara Tarabotti, Vince Tosetto, Damiano Venuto

This work was commissioned by TBA21–Academy within the framework of the S+T+ARTS 4WaterII residency program with the support of Konsortium Deutsche Meeresforschung (KDM) within the Prep4Blue project as a contribution to the EU Restore our Ocean and Waters by 2030, and with the collaboration of Ca' Foscari, CNR-ISMAR, ETT, and Venice International University.

Il Fiato del Suolo, forum theatre is a part of Husni Bey's ongoing project, The Lagoon's Legislative Theater, which explores the connection between the Marghera port, the global flow of capital, and Venice, with its residents and more-than-human inhabitants. 

Multiple attempts at regenerating and converting the area through pointed investments have continuously stalled, making it an important symbolic microcosm of various, unresolved, intertwined instances of capitalist collapse, an area of capitalist ‘symptomatology’. The worker-led theater piece is centered on the history of Porto Marghera, an industrial zone situated directly across from Venice. It also reimagines the Venice lagoon as a breathing organism. Water—and the network of waterways—plays an integral role in the work: as a carrier, as life and living. 

Too often viewed as a boundary separating Venice from its industrial counterpart, the lagoon in this piece becomes a connective tissue, suturing together the intertwined histories of the two cities. Porto Marghera became a significant site of worker-led resistance, particularly against toxic conditions in the workplace. It was the setting for one of Italy’s first landmark trials in which a petrochemical plant was charged with environmental disaster and involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of over 150 workers from cancer. The question then remains: how do we account for what we have long called capitalist 'development', and the planetary devastation it has left in its wake?

Il Fiato del Suolo, forum theatre was presented at TBA21 Solstice Festival, curated by María Montero Sierra at Ocean Space, Venice, as part of the concluding event of the TBA21–Academy's residency program, organized within the framework of STARTS4WaterII and featuring live performance, sound, and participatory installation dedicated to deep listening to the multispecies stories of the Venice lagoon.