5. How to live with the Dunes?

Lagoon Micro-ecologies, is the title of the second series of itinerant conversations “Venice as a Model for the Future?” curated by Barbara Casavecchia and Pietro Consolandi for TBA21−Academy and Ocean Space.

This new chapter moves beyond the urban boundaries of the city of Venice towards the islands of its lagoon. The participants direct their steps and gazes to the land and the seascapes created by the interaction between various species, not only human, that inhabit them: from coastal sand to garden soil, from salt marshes, a thriving home to wild plants and birds, to seabeds populated by tiny fish and molluscs.

In inviting us to rethink landscapes as “assemblages” of coexisting life forms, requiring “habits of noticing”, scholar and anthropologist Anna Tsing reminds us that they are “open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them. They show us the potential histories in the making.”*

Together with Ruggero Di Paola, architect and volunteer, we visit to the Oasi Dune degli Alberoni on the Lido, which since 2002 has been managed by the WWF and the Municipality of Venice. How can we redesign the coexistence between humans and non-humans among the white and gray pioneer dunes, keeping conservation, cohabitation, environmental protection and beach use all in balance? During the conversation, we will review the most recent projects that have affected the area, and that will determine its future, and the plans for the public beaches in collaboration with WWF Venice and Territory.

5.30pm: Meeting at Ocean Space. Departure for “Lagoon Micro-ecologies. Venice as a model for the future?”

6.00pm: Meeting on the Lido of Venice, in front of the church of Santa Maria Elisabetta.

Participation is free, please make a reservation at info@ocean-space.org. Limited places available.We remind you that transport via vaporetto is at the expense of participants.

The Lido Santa Maria Elisabetta vaporetto stop can be reached by lines 1 / 5.1 / 5.2 / 6 /10 / 14

Born in Venice, Ruggero Di Paola graduated in architecture at IUAV in 1999, and was a founding partner of Studio D+Z architetti from 2004 to 2020. Ruggero mainly deals with architectural restoration and the energy efficiency of buildings. He has collaborated with LIPU and is a volunteer with WWF Venice, for whom he has developed a project for the reorganization and overall use of the Oasi degli Alberoni on the Lido di Venezia.

“Lagoon Micro-ecologies” is part of TBA21–Academy’s program, The Current III: The Mediterraneans: “Thus waves come in pairs” (After Etel Adnan), led by Barbara Casavecchia.

The Current III is a transdisciplinary program of perception, listening, thought and learning that supports projects, collective education, and voices on the shores of the Mediterranean through art, culture, science, and activism.

*Anna Tsing, When The Things We Study Respond to Each Other, in: More-than-Human, ed. by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, and Lisa Mazza, co-published by Het Nieuwe Instituut, Office for Political Innovation, General Ecology Project at the Serpentine Galleries and Manifesta Foundation, 2020.