Giorgio Andreotta Calò, lacuna, 2021
The Current III: Mediterraneans

lacuna (2021)

“We are instinctively led to imagine a crossing of this liquid space via water. This is how I have always lived the lagoon: as an extension of Venice and its canals, and at the same time as an enclosed, protected space, separated from the sea. I was interested in reconsidering this place from what lies outside of it, that is, from a dimension of bodily crossing, by moving along its boundary lines. I was interested in considering it as a void, a gap to be gradually filled, slowly circumscribed and observed. To walk…”
                                                                    –Giorgio Andreotta Calò

 
lacuna is a walk along the perimeter of the Venetian lagoon conceived by Giorgio Andreotta Calò as part of the transdisciplinary initiative The Current III “Mediterraneans: ‘Thus waves come in pairs’ (after Etel Adnan)”, led by Barbara Casavecchia and commissioned by TBA21–Academy at Ocean Space, Venice.
 
The artist writes: "In Italian, “laguna” (lagoon) is etymologically and phonetically close to “lacuna,” from the Latin “lacus” (lake), meaning cavity, lack, or void. The action of walking emerges from this semantic meaning. It aims to redefine the lagoon’s fleeting borders through an inclusive and shared gesture.
 
Like a living organism, the lagoon advances and recedes. As if breathing slowly and deeply, it constantly expands its boundaries, invades the mainland and then abandons it. This variable ecosystem determines the coordinates that govern the dynamics of walking along its edges, following the transformations of its landscapes, and complying to its flow, cycles, and tides. While trying to circumscribe the amphibious habitat of the lagoon, the path marked by the passage on foot is promptly erased by the tidal flow.
 
lacuna is both the large void around which such a path winds, a liquid circle gravitating around the city of Venice and the attempt to fill it, to understand it, to observe it during a terrestrial circumnavigation, to explore it with a wandering embrace. Within the circularity of the space covered, a unity is gradually established between outside and inside, between the slow mutation of the territory and that of those who are crossing it.
 
The whole experience is configured as a narrative process, where the contingent and the unexpected emerge as familiar elements of a changing environment, whose nature is equally defined by accident and rules".
 
The intervention took place in two temporally distinct moments: a first exploratory clockwise tour of the lagoon that Calò carried out as a solo journey in June 2021 and a second, shorter tour, partly overlapping with the first one, with a group about a month later. The latter, entitled “Walking a wavy line”, unfolded along the coastal strip that separates the Adriatic sea from the lagoon.

About the Artist​

Giorgio Andreotta Calò (b. Venice 1979) is an Italian artist who lives and works between Italy and the Netherlands. Walking, understood as a gesture both real and symbolic, political and aesthetic, is a fundamental element in the artist’s practice.

“His research explores the dimension of transit, as a way of approaching a work through the gradual reappropriation of the landscape and its history. The work presented to the public is the combination of a process and a time, set in the physicality of matter, taking its ‘form’ from the environment with which it interacts and from the energies released within.” (Mara Ambrožic Verderber)

Giorgio Andreotta Calò studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice and the Kunsthochschule in Berlin. In 2008 he moved to Holland where he was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2009–2011). In 2011 he participated in the 54th Venice Biennale directed by Bice Curiger with the work Ritorno (Return): a 1200-km journey on foot from Amsterdam to Venice. In 2012 he won the Italian Contemporary Art Prize promoted by the Museo MAXXI in Rome, and in 2013 the Premio New York granted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2017 he was one of the three artists chosen to represent Italy in the Pavilion curated by Cecilia Alemani at the 57th Venice Biennale. That same year his project Anastasis won the Italian Council competition, promoted by MiBACT, for the execution of a monumental installation that was presented in 2018 at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. In 2019, Pirelli HangarBicocca devoted an important retrospective to the artist, titled Cittàdimilano, curated by Roberta Tenconi.

The Current III: Mediterraneans

With the working title "Mediterraneans: ‘Thus waves come in pairs’ (after Etel Adnan),” the first stream of The Current III cycle is led by Barbara Casavecchia as a transdisciplinary and transregional exercise in sensing and learning with by supporting situated projects, collective pedagogies, and voices along the Mediterranean shores across art, culture, science, conservation, and activism.