Lagoon Gleam

"XPort Venice: Venice heritage and innovation Hub", Suzhou design Week. Peachblossom Village, Gusu District, Suzhou, China

Lagoon Gleam, Video installation 2018. Mixed technique: live action, classic and digital animation, paper cut-out, puppets, glass, cloth and plastic materials, 20 X 9 meters

Lagoon Gleam, designed by Mira Video, is a giant animated fresco that founds the bond structure of the exhibition "XPort Venice: Venice heritage and innovation Hub", promoted by Suzhou Design Week, Venice city hall and Fondazione Venezia 2000, set-up by Dontstop Architettura. The exhibition celebrates the relationship between Suzhou and Venice, two marvellous lagoon cities twinned from over 38 years, UNESCO heritage.

“The video installation Lagoon gleam is the aesthetic and conceptual transposition of the main themes of the exhibition, and constitutes its main framework and scenography. The animated loop synthesizes and superimposes the different levels of meaning of each of the four sections, with a series of symbolic and dreamlike frescoes, with continuous references between different points of view.

The theme of the hands, which recalls the act of "thinking with the hands" typical of the design process, intersects with the natural elements that forge the glass, the minute nets of fishermen that emerge from the water and become precious dressed in lace, the inverted forest that founds Venice and that makes each column correspond to an underwater tree that supports it, the kaleidoscope that never stands still and is constantly reconfigured for the gestural intervention of the hands, like a mischievous carnival joke.

Symbols, visions, symbolic objects, urban themes act as a bridge between tradition and innovation in the exhibition and in Lagoon Gleam merge in a visual landscape that tries to reproduce the uncontrolled beauty of the city. The graphic aesthetic combines Chinese charachters and symbols with Venetian symbols, creating a series of parallels and references between Venice and Suzhou, Italy and China, the East and the West. A sound base superimposes the noises of the dock of a port, the noises of the tinkling glass, the gurgling of the water that reverberates enveloping the viewer in a timeless bubble.” (Michele Brunello, curator XPortVenice)

In this work we have staged the Venetian excellences in dialogue with the thematic rooms of the exhibition:

The Murano glass symbolizes the creativity city of artists\artisans.

The Burano lace is the collaborative city, sharing of workmanship and knowledge.

The forcola is the lagoon city, urban site in symbiosis with the environment and biodiversity.

The mask is the relationship city, of exchange and welcoming.

We have invented a language to rebuild an imaginary, mixing the esthetic of the chinese shadows theatre and the italian "teatro di figura", in contamination with different techniques of digital shows and animation movie. The result is a hybrid opera between heritage and innovation, handmade and digital, where we have mixed real people, body parts and dreamlike figures; we have employed real objects like glass and laces and simulacrum built with our hands. We have also experimented analogic effects to paint the atmosphere of the fog and water reflections. With all these miscellaneous materials we’ve created an oniric world which melts together the imaginaries between Cina and Italy, Venice and Suzhou.

After watching the working of Murano glass, we imagined the furnace becoming the mouth of a great Chinese dragon in paper cut out, which like a master glassmaker blows incandescent glass beads.
We studied the history and technique of Burano lacemakers and the aesthetics of Venetian architecture to construct a mask-character composed by arches and laces that comes from the weaving of fishermen's nets.
We have cut and assembled the different shapes of Venetian windows to make the light structure of the lagoon city.