On a clear, moonless night, Luigi Cavaleri stands with a fisherman on the ISMAR Acqua Alta Oceanographic Platform eight miles off the coast of Venice. You have to stay alert on the platform, out in the open sea, especially to sudden weather changes.

They are unaware that they are on the threshold of an unforgettable night.

The fisherman turns to the oceanographer and offers him an accurate forecast, almost like poetry:

“Gigi, the dosana will be here soon,

the wind will carry the strambo,

and the ardòr will fill the water”

Let’s translate. Soon the tides will begin to change at the port mouths, and the “dosana” is the water that flows out of the lagoon. The wind that “takes the strambo” refers to when the clouds change direction and the night breeze begins. The “ardór”, on the other hand, is the phenomenon in which the sea lights up with phosphorescence, caused by plankton moving below the water’s surface.

It is with the ardòr in mind that we begin this editorial project as part of the Metagoon platform. Like the phosphorescence of plankton, we aim to highlight details, people, movements, currents, and reflections that are not always observed in the everyday conditions of our lagoon. While Metagoon collects interviews and moving images in parallel, Ardór flows through words in movement, creating not just a collective, but also a space for experimenting with stories, narratives, and poems. Ardór, animated by a ‘plurivocal’ spirit and a deep sense of collaboration, will be enriched by contributions from other voices, invited to broaden views, approaches, and tools. Through humanistic perspectives, we hope that this too can represent a set of tools to better understand the ecosystem that hosts us, through both empirical knowledge and an essential hint of wonder.

Ardór, an editorial project by Metagoon.

Editorial staff: Alice Ongaro Sartori, Costanza Mazzucchelli, Elena Barison, Eleonora Puliero, Giacomo Carraro, Matteo Stocco.

Graphic design: Giulia Sanson.