Venice differs from other cities on the Peninsula not only because of its watery nature that slows down the tight pace of travel and the simplest activities, but also because here the city scenario clashes with a condition of precariousness spread from the social to the environmental and urban sides. The transience of the lagoon archipelago first fuels its external perception as a postcard city, then an ongoing confrontation with its specificities for those who inhabit it. What at first may fascinate is a symptom of an ongoing climate change, exacerbated by the increasingly massive anthropogenic presence in the lagoon, an urgency that Metagoon intends to observe and wish to reflect upon.
Venetian videomaker Matteo Stocco’s multimedia project combines art and science to offer a tool for observing the ecosystem complexity of the Venetian lagoon and, to do so, collects, documents and systematizes its traditions and contradictions through interviews with scientists, university professors and inhabitants. Stocco’s focus on the everyday and the surrounding reality is reflected in his choice to collect the testimonies mainly through video, a medium that can communicate the urgency of climate change in an immediate and engaging way, also thanks to aesthetic design devices. In order to map and archive the intangible heritage, Stocco assumed a methodology of the gaze, which oscillates between the dichotomies of archival documentation and micro-reportage. The conception of Metagoon dates back to 2014, during an artistic residency at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, where Stocco was able to develop investigations into the dynamics and issues influential in the configuration of contemporary cities.
The way the collected material is graphically rendered alludes to the scientific sphere, in particular to a minimalist circular microscope slide, which when dissected recalls a ship’s radar and each of its parts corresponds to the six thematic areas of the interviews (lagoon geography, science, ecosystem management, industry, landscapes, fishing). In the testimonies scientific languages are interwoven with vernacular ones, allowing a reconstruction of the transformation of the environment, as well as the social and urban ecosystem related to it. It is not only a tool for research and in-depth study of the Venetian reality, Metagoon aims to be a mapping of knowledge, an atlas of the lagoon, a means of knowledge and education useful to those who do not know this context, therefore, the interviews are accompanied by an in-depth appendix with a synopsis of the video and biography of the witness.
The community component is of particular importance within the project; it is intended to create multimedia and technical relationships, but also to activate community processes. Metagoon is the principle from which new research paths, exhibition solutions and workshops were initiated to engage and include viewers invited to develop their own reflection and interpretation. Creative writing workshops were organized on the occasion of the exhibition The Parable of the Mountain (Panorama, Venice, Dec. 15, 2023 – Jan. 27, 2024) and the workshop Metagoon: chronicles of future geographies (D.H. Office, Venice, March 2 – April 1, 2024) to bring together encounters, stories and drawings exploring the tool of the map, questioning “what might Venice become in 500 years?” The occasion allowed to creatively reinterpret the precariousness of the lagoon reality, making maps of a future Venice, to generate possible scenarios, to imagine a meta-lagoon, crossing geographic-environmental, cultural and temporal boundaries, according to the assumption that imagining new geographies allows not only to identify risks and desires, but also to raise new questions about the present.
The purpose of user involvement in the project is also amplified with the expansion of the platform’s functions and an opening of the analysis to new aquatic horizons. The Blog is therefore a section of the platform, in implementation, that intends to welcome external contributions to become a working and gathering space that maps interventions, experiences and insights into other lagoon ecosystems.
Matteo Stocco, Metagoon, 2015 – ongoing
images: (cover 1) Matteo Stocco, Metagoon, sito web, (2) Metagoon, first interactive installation, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Piazza San Marco, Venice, February 2016, courtesy of Matteo Stocco (3) Metagoon showcase (maggio 2019),installation together with the project The Swamp School, curated by Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, in collaboration with Stefano Mudu and Davide Tagliapietra, Serra dei Giardini, Venice, July 1st., 2020, courtesy of Matteo Stocco (4) Metagoon: cronache di geografie future, laboratory and exhibition view, Spazio Malipiero, D.H. Office, Venice, 2024, ph Enrico Fiorese, courtesy of Matteo Stocco and D.H. Office
