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Lodovica Guarnieri
When I breathe, I swallow the Lagoon, 2022

June 8, 2022

TBA21–Academy

Programming

Commissions

Performance, via dei Petroli, Porto Marghera, Venice, 60 min

When I Breathe, I Swallow the Lagoon chronicles the bonds between humans and nonhumans in a toxic environment. It does so by taking us where the environment of the lagoon rebels against binary geographical and temporal coordinates: land becomes liquid, emerged islands are part of the seabed, past and future blur into a continuous present.

Set in this amphibious lagoon, never fully emerged or submerged, the performance winds along the infrastructure of the former ENI refinery in Via dei Petroli in Porto Marghera. Interweaving different characters, places and times, When I Breathe, I Swallow the Lagoon highlights the interconnection between bodies, environments, and power structures and rethinks responsibility in deep time.

Project: Lodovica Guarnieri
Text: Lodovica Guarnieri, H. Leigh Brown
Performer: Gaia Ginevra Giorgi
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy with the support of S+T+ARTS

Lodovica Guarnieri is an Italian-born researcher and designer based in London. Her work grapples with technoscience as it relates to environmental and social justice, coloniality, and climate change, with a particular focus on coastal cities and environments. Through performance, text, and curatorial projects, she interrogates the technical and political production of nature as a contested site of power, as well as the site of resistance to dominant narratives.

Guarnieri was part of the projects Non-Extractive Architecture and Hostile Environment(s) and previously held research and curatorial positions at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Manifesta 12, Palermo/Amsterdam.

Her work has been presented at V-A-C Zattere, the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, Bureau Europa, Stroom Den Haag, Screen City Biennial, VIPER Gallery, and MAO Ljubljana, among other institutions. She holds an MA with distinction in research architecture from Goldsmiths, University of London.

“Becoming Fresh & Salty Drops (of water)” was a month-long program celebrating the water and life forms of the Venice Lagoon, the largest coastal lagoon in the Mediterranean Sea, home to TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space. Stories, actions, and online and live events narrate and act upon the future of the Venice Lagoon from ecological and magical perspectives.

S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission to foster alliances between science, technology and the arts, in order to cultivate technological innovation centered on human needs and values.
The pilot project STARTS4Water builds on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 and especially on SDG 5 ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ and SDG14 ‘Life Below Water’.

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Lodovica GuarnieriWhen I breathe, I swallow the Lagoon, 2022

June 8, 2022

Lodovica Guarnieri
When I breathe, I swallow the Lagoon, 2022