Digital space, environment and performance in the Venetian context

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

aquatic ecologies   artistic research   embodied ecology   lagoon   screendance

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

This contribution explores how artistic research can foster environmental awareness through engagement with aquatic geographies, focusing on the Venetian Lagoon. It argues that embodied and performative practices enable a situated mode of ecological understanding, in which bodily experience, site-specificity and sensory perception function as tools for interpreting environmental change. The text emerges from the research project Repeating Eutrophia (2019–ongoing), developed in collaboration with artist Laura Santini within the collective Confluenze. The project draws on the ecological concepts of eutrophia, understood as balanced nutrient conditions in aquatic ecosystems, and eutrophication, referring to nutrient over-enrichment leading to algal blooms, hypoxia and potential ecosystem collapse. “Repeating” indicates both the iterative structure of the artistic process and the cyclical dynamics of ecological transformation under investigation. Through performative experimentation, participatory actions and site-responsive practices, the project translates ecological processes into sensory experiences. Within this framework, performance operates as a methodological tool for sensing and articulating environmental change, complementing scientific modes of ecological observation. The project has developed through seven iterative episodes, each addressing the tension between ecological balance and excess through different artistic formats. While rooted in the Venetian Lagoon, Repeating Eutrophia operates as an open research structure that can be extended to other environmental contexts.

31.08.2026