Exploring amphibious landscapes. A walk to Sant’Andrea Fort

Annalisa Metta

Annalisa Metta – in conversation with Giorgio Andreotta Calò, together with their students and the researchers from NICHE, in particular the Ecological Art Practices research group – presents an experience that begins with a choral reading inside the Italian Pavilion, before extending to the exploration and observation of the Isola del Forte di Sant’Andrea, long uninhabited by humans and now undergoing transformation in view of its new public use, based on an alliance between artistic practices and scientific research.

The fortress island is a significant place for reflecting on heritage, on the relationship between nature and artifice, on the physical and cultural accessibility of sites of value, on the complex tension between abandonment and enhancement, between institutions and communities, between rule and exception, on the very concept of an island, in both a geographical and metaphorical sense, and on the relationship between permanence and transience. The fortress island, where forms are definitive yet unstable, ever on the verge of becoming something else due to countless environmental interferences, represents the amphibious condition – the ‘double life’ – so crucial to understanding the contemporary landscape, and will be the text we read together as we cross it.

This experience intersects with the work of Chiara Camoni, who explores the ways of being of matter, its intrinsic instability, and the collective rituals of form generation, encompassing both the human and the non-human.

The walk lasts approximately three hours and includes a boat trip from the Arsenale to the island, with a convivial break at the Forte di Sant’Andrea.

Limited places available; registration required no later than three days before the event by writing to: iscrizione@lungomare.org

Annalisa Metta

Annalisa Metta is a full professor of Landscape Architecture at Roma Tre University. In 2007, she was one of the founding partners of the OSA design studio, with which she has produced numerous award-winning and published projects. She has conducted research in Italy and abroad and in 2016–17, was awarded the Italian Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. She is the creator of installations and temporary gardens, including In stato di grazia, with Felice Cimatti (AMA, Maddaloni, 2025) and Every 9 days, in the group exhibition Regeneration (Rome, 2022) featuring works by Chiara Camoni. Co-editor of the volumes Coltiviamo il nostro giardino (DeriveApprodi, 2019) and Wild & The City: landscape architecture for lush urbanism (Libria, 2020), she is the author of Il paesaggio è un mostro. Città selvatiche e nature ibride (DeriveApprodi, 2022). She contributed the essay ‘Timekeepers: Artifices of Vagueness, Practices of Temperance’ to the catalogue Con te con tutto (NERO Editions, 2026).

NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities

NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities is a research centre at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. With an interdisciplinary approach, the Centre promotes research and third-mission activities related to environmental humanities, supporting and developing artistic and academic collaborations with numerous local and international partners through participation in workshops, meetings and exhibitions. Venice is an unrivalled observatory and, at the same time, a living laboratory of ecosystemic balance and coexistence for a diverse global community. With its eighteen interdisciplinary research groups, including one dedicated to Ecological Art Practices, NICHE fosters dialogue among scholars, innovators, artists, writers, journalists and stakeholders to forge a new alliance between the humanities, social life and the natural sciences that can have a positive impact on the city and the world.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò

Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Venice) is a visual artist whose work spans sculpture, installation and performance, often characterised by a strong experiential and site-specific dimension. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and the Kunsthochschule in Berlin, he further developed his artistic practice through major international residencies, including the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and Villa Arson in Nice. His works, often monumental in scale, explore the relationship between space, time and memory, inviting the viewer to engage physically and sensorially. In 2011, he was featured in the main exhibition of the 54th Venice Biennale; in 2012, he received the MAXXI Prize; in 2014, the New York Prize. In 2017, he represented Italy at the 57th Venice Biennale with the installation Senza titolo (La fine del mondo): an architectural intervention reflecting on the instability of our historical present. In 2019, his first retrospective was held at Hangar Bicocca Pirelli (Milan).

Microclima

The project for the reopening of the Fort of Sant’Andrea is led by Microclima, a social promotion association founded by Paolo Rosso and active in Venice since 2011. The association’s first projects, focusing on the relationship between nature, cultural heritage and public space, were carried out at the Serra dei Giardini in Venice. Over the following years, Microclima expanded its scope internationally, developing projects in Guwahati (India), Santiago (Cuba) and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia), and promoting intercultural exchange programmes for artists and creatives. Since 2020, thanks to the support of a strong network of local and international partners, the association has curated and organised Cinema Galleggiante. Project managers Mauro Baronchelli and Sara Maggioni, architect Alexander Eriksson Furunes, curator Kristine Jærn Pilgaard and artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò have all contributed to defining the concept for this project.