PERFORMANCE:Andrea Morucchio-Venezia Anno Zero

“Venizia Anno Zero” is a project by Andrea Morucchio that documents video areas of Venice during the lockdown or quarantine period caused by the Corona virus. The beauty and spirit of the lagoon city re-emerged from the moment when all the activities related to the mono economy based on the exploitation of mass tourism stopped. The chaos and the crowding between calli (streets), campi (squares) and canals, the dirt and rubbish abandoned everywhere, the pollution of air and lagoon water and the noise, the stalls of bars and restaurants that are out of control, the overflowing shops of cheap products for tourists … all this has suddenly disappeared allowing the city to manifest a poignant and metaphysical beauty. An unprecedented beauty and charm in the history of the lagoon city, the effect of an epochal event on an international scale which in Venice has suddenly reset the evident deleterious effects of its management in the last decades. In my artistic career started exactly twenty years ago, – my first personal “Dinamiche” is from June 2000 – I have already dealt with issues related to my city, to name a few “Le Nostre Idee Vinceranno / Our Ideas Will Win” installation at the Mocenigo Museum in 2002 , or “Pulse Red” installation intervention at Punta della Dogana in 2004; but it is with the installation project ”The Rape of Venice” of 2015 that I clearly deal with the topic of the decline of the city and its inevitable end if the tendency to exploit it in the most bitter way had not been drastically reversed. And now we find ourselves experiencing this moment of suspension that leads those who despite the restrictions of movement to go through calli and fields to live an experience that it is not exaggerated to call it dreamlike. This prompted me to move in an almost “performative” way, sneaking furtively through the streets, having deliberately not requested any official permission to go around a city under police control. The video footage and related recording of sounds such as the screeching of seagulls, the cooing of pigeons, the lapping of water or the voices and music from the houses manage to express more than the photograph the sensations that are felt in this situation. I am practically documenting most of the areas of Venice by collecting a considerable amount of material that for the moment I use as an online diary on social networks by posting short edited videos reporting the place on the day and time of filming. Subsequently this material will also be edited with the collaboration of a contemporary musician to become a video / audio installation. To make the installation experience multisensory, through the collaboration with Marco Vidal ceo of a perfume company, an olfactory essence will be developed which will have to express that sense of “ancestral spirituality” that this suspended Venice emanates and that must have been felt by the first inhabitants of the saltmarshes who thanks to that spirit founded the Serenissima. A final consideration on the title “Venezia Anno Zero / Venice Year Zero” is clearly an evocative quotation of Rossellini’s neo-realistic masterpiece “Germania Anno Zero” for which the shots are not only poetic but express a vision of the soul of the city and its residual inhabitants from which hopefully you can start a virtuous path that reverses the self-destructive trend that has characterized the history of Venice in recent years.-Andrea Morucchio

C.V. Andrea Morucchio (Venice 1967) After receiving a degree in Political Science from the University of Padua, Andrea Morucchio began his photographic career in 1989. In the mid-90s he produced an important body of work connected to prolonged stays in Cuba and Nepal. Since the end of the ’90s, he has expanded his own linguistic research – often based on considerations of a socio-political nature – in various directions, from sculpture to installation, from video to photography and performance. His works are preserved in the Museo del Vetro / Glass Museum, Murano, Musei Civici, Venezia, in the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia and in the Provenance Collection, Tacoma, Usa. He has been the curator of various exhibitions and art projects, such as PetroLogiche (2004), dealing with issues regarding the problems caused by the Petrochemical of Porto Marghera, Mars Pavilion (2005) during the 52^ Biennale di Venezia at the Greenhouse of the Giardini di Castello, Venezia. Morucchio’s most recent interventions, like the multimedia installation The Rape of Venice held at Palazzo Mocenigo in 2015, deepen sensori-emotional values, even those that sometimes we call judgments of sentiment and taste, and are evidence of the artist’s attentive critical reflection on art, culture and the deviancies of our contemporary society.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwvEEKpvR5znQ-MlzAsXqcwd4oVWcF8w7&fbclid=IwAR2Y_GvTfg329iQmuaczjWebeyUrDEkqZ4gxX_vOHB715cDkITuK6roBLK4

Andrea Morucchio, Venezia Anno Zero, 2020, © Andrea Morucchio, Courtesy the artist