Manifesto

Venice Lagoon

The city of Venice rises from the waters of the Mediterranean’s largest lagoon, an ecosystem that has balanced between natural instability and human-made adaptations throughout centuries, with early hydraulic interventions dating as far as 1400 AD. The lagoon provides essential ecosystem services, from acting as a natural carbon sink to sustaining biodiversity, alleviating floods and storms, and allowing multiple human activities in its intertidal spaces. Throughout the centuries, Venetians regarded it as their source of life, not only providing food and wealth but also functioning as a natural defence system and connecting them to the sea. Nonetheless, the lagoon has suffered significant damage due to anthropic activities through severe pollution and contamination and exponential rates of erosion mainly caused by excessive navigation and the dredging of enormous canals to allow large ship traffic. Bringing to light this interconnection between the lagoon and its inhabitants, submerged by the rising water but still very much alive, can spearhead a cultural shift that can bring tangible change, last but not least in a legal sense.

TBA21–Academy

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary is a leading international art and advocacy foundation. TBA21 is based in Madrid, working in association with the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, and has other important poles of action in Venice (Italy) and Portland (Jamaica). All activity at TBA21 is collaborative and fundamentally driven by artists and the belief in art and culture as accelerators in social and environmental transformations and ultimately in the service of peace. 

TBA21–Academy is the foundation’s research arm, fostering a deeper relationship with the Ocean and wider ecologies by working as an incubator for transdisciplinary inquiry, artistic production, and environmental advocacy. For more than a decade, the Academy has catalyzed new forms of knowledge emerging from the exchanges between art, science, policy, and conservation in long-term and collaborative engagement through fellowships, residency programs, and activities in a wide variety of formats.

The Confluence of European Waters is supported by two entities within Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: NICHE (THE NEW INSTITUTE Center for Environmental Humanities), led by Professor Francesca Tarocco, and the UNESCO Chair of Water, Heritage and Sustainable Development, led by Professor Pietro Daniel Omodeo.

Photo by Ariana Ferraretto.
Photo by Katarina Rakuscek.