The humidity descends heavily. A wind dies down, pressure and temperature dissipate like vapors, refracted light shimmers. Something has changed; the reflected color, silent and its smell, don’t match. We all have the impression that nothing will be the same again, but we don’t say it.

Panorama presents from December 15, 2023, to January 27, 2024, the first event of Horizons, “The Parabola of the Mountain. A Writing Platform for Saline Scenarios” by Matteo Stocco.

“The Parabola of the Mountain” represents an evolution of Panorama’s work on its amphibious surroundings, through an installation and a writing workshop conceived by Matteo Stocco based on the metagoon.net platform. An observation and investigation tool for the Venice lagoon, Metagoon, initiated in 2015, consists of a collection of videos and interviews exploring the varied and complex aspects of the Venice lagoon and its inhabiting communities.

The inspiration for the title comes from the words of scientist Davide Tagliapietra, who, in one of the interviews within the platform, is able to create a link between two visually distant ecosystems, the lagoon and the mountain. Similarly, new perspectives will be generated from the video testimonials enclosed in Metagoon, seeking to reinterpret the daily reality introduced to Panorama with “Bassi Fondali.”

All participants invited to the workshop with the subtitle “A Writing Platform for Saline Scenarios” – Caterina Capelli, Anouk Chambaz, Andrea De Fusco and Giacomo De Fusco, Benedetta Fioravanti, Furio Ganz, Johannes Menghi, Alessandra Messali, Pauline Maure, Matteo Primiterra, Federico Riccato, Elonora Sovrani, Joe Sartorius, Chiara Spadaro – are encouraged to embrace new analogies, creating science fiction narratives centered around the Venice lagoon.

The workshop’s goal is to write a text for possible future short films inspired by texts, interviews, and ideas developed during the collective work. The final results, graphically reworked by the artist, will enrich the Panorama space during the exhibition period, along with images generated by artificial intelligence using the texts themselves as a source and additional visual inputs extracted from Metagoon.

The approximately one-month journey will be coordinated by the artist in collaboration with Christopher Roth, a director, curator, and invited workshop director. The spatial triangle of Panorama will thus become the starting point for a participatory reflection aimed at individuals capable of working with the lagoon, words, and moving images.

Completing the exhibition period will be a public program consisting of screenings and presentation moments to learn about the participants’ research.