Zoöp
Ocean Space becomes a Zoöp.
Zoöp is an organizational model, born in the Netherlands, built on a premise: organizations (both for-profit and non-profit) should actively work toward ecological regeneration, representing the interests of human and other-than-human life—plants, animals, soil, ecosystems—within their own decision-making.
The name fuses zoë, Greek for life in its broadest sense, with cooperation. To become a Zoöp, an organization appoints an independent Speaker for the Living, assigned through the Zoönomic Foundation to voice other-than-human interests internally, and commits to the Zoönomic Annual Cycle: a yearly process of assessing its ecological relationships and setting concrete regenerative goals. Since the first Zoöp was certified in 2022, the model has spread to a growing international network of cultural institutions, farms, schools, companies, and municipalities.
Ocean Space, TBA21–Academy's flagship center in Venice, has engaged with Zoöp's principles since 2021—well before formalizing its own commitment. That year, it hosted the public research project Venice as Zoöp and the presentation of the Compendium of Rights of Nature, together with the Embassy of the North Sea, The New Institute, and We Are Here Venice, exploring the Venetian lagoon as a multispecies community. This engagement continued through Confluence of European Water Bodies (2024) and, most tellingly, through Convivial Tables, TBA21–Academy's ongoing research program on lagoon aquaculture, food ecologies, and regenerative cultivation. The program fosters direct dialogue among fishers, scientists, artists, and local communities around reciprocity with the lagoon's waters—perhaps the clearest expression yet, within Ocean Space's programming, of the regenerative, more-than-human values at the heart of the Zoöp model.
This engagement is a natural extension of TBA21–Academy's own research lines—Convivial Conservation, Rights of Nature, Ecologies of Technologies, and Governing Otherwise—all asking how power and care might be reorganized around ecological systems.
Following a baseline assessment carried out with the Zoönomic Institute in May 2026, Ocean Space will officially become a Zoöp starting October 2026, signing the Zoöp Contract and turning years of aligned practice into a certified, structural part of how the institution operates.
Our Speaker for the Living is Chiara Famengo, a Venetian curator and researcher based between Venice and London, whose practice investigates the cultural, ecological, and political dimensions of hybrid, transitional landscapes—particularly marshes—connecting contemporary art with local ecological knowledges and environmental care. She curates AMALGAMA (TIDAL ArtS EU Program), Terramobile (Venice Design Biennale), and Three Rivers (London, 2022–2029). In 2025, she was assigned curator of Convivial Tables IV: Shifting Landscapes at Ocean Space, and currently, she is a researcher in the Ecological Art Practices cluster at NICHE, Ca' Foscari University, Venice.
