Art Preserva (Squillo)- Inflatable, life buoy, Venetian bricks, discarded timber, gold leaf, spritz bottles, canal water.

Venetian Bind Group 4, 2024

European Cultural Centre, Pelazzo Mora, Venice

The message arrived via WhatsApp: “Meet at 4:30pm at Museo Storico Navale Venezia, on the waterfront in Arsenale.” 

 The air was heavy with humidity as we gathered, sweat-soaked and curious, unsure of what we were about to step into. 

 We climbed the stairs to Level 1, where we were told to find the room with the Bucintoro. There, beside the final model of the ceremonial ship, a museum plaque revealed a layered story of ritual and dominion. Amid lavish gilded surfaces, we uncovered the ceremony of marrying the sea as a spectacle of power. A gold ring, blessed and valued at six ducats, was offered by the DOGE and thrown into the lagoon with the words: 

 “Disposamus te mare in Signum veri perpetuique Dominii.” 
(We marry you, oh sea, in token of our true and perpetual dominion.) 

 Bridge and sea, violence and superstition, conflict and appeasement - these histories still echo through the city. Once, water was conquered. Today, it rises as a force beyond control. The same ritual, now recast, no longer asserts power but pleads for connection, mercy, and renewal. 

 Later, another message arrived. We were called to a restaurant in Dorsoduro. There, the waiter referred to us by our names and delivered envelopes. Inside: a protest postcard and a gold ring. After dinner and with further instruction, we gathered on the Ponte dei Pugni (Bridge of Fists), standing on three of the four golden footprints once used to mark historical brawls. Each of us threw our rings into the canal - a new kind of ceremony. Less spectacle, more offering. We were binding ourselves to the water, not as masters, but as witnesses. 

The following day brought a surprise: a heated argument between two lovers on the same bridge. Their clash over climate change grew louder and more intense. What seemed like coincidence turned out to be a performance - another provocation. Not a fight of fists, but of ideas. A ritual of friction that challenged our comfort and deepened our inquiry. 

Throughout the week, we were invited to bring our most radical selves into view. Through a series of workshops and actions, we explored personal and collective connections to water. Dan Koop led us along the canal’s edge through intimate stories. Sean Loughrey offered songs to the water. Tania Blackwell dragged a white veil from the bridge, as if drawing memory from the current. A gondola ride carried us from the open lagoon into quiet canals, moving through states of vulnerability, calm, and tension. 

From these shared provocations, three video works emerged. One followed a turista crossing the Rialto Bridge in a life jacket, a strange and quiet alarm amid the flow of tourists. Another reimagined the DOGE’s ring ceremony with a salvagente, a bright orange, ring shaped, life buoy, flung from the Bridge of Fists in a gesture both playful and political. The third tracked emergency boat lights flickering through dry alleyways, signaling disorientation, urgency, and collapse. 

The objects from these performances were not discarded. Instead, they were reassembled alongside other locally sourced objects into a sculptural installation titled ‘arte preserva’ - both precarious and poetic, in the spirit of arte povera. A life buoy, gilded timber scavenged from a boatyard, salvaged Venetian bricks, spritz liquor bottles, and water taken directly from the canal - all stacked in delicate tension. Not stable. Not safe. A fragile monument to survival, that could go under at any moment 

Venice may be sinking, but our gestures persist. Not in grand displays, but in humble, improvised rituals. Not to dominate the sea, but to listen to it and bind us once again. 

‘arte preserva’ by Tania Blackwell, Dan Koop & Sean Loughrey