Gathering into the Maelstrom

‘Gathering into the Maelstrom’ – at Sale Docks Dorsoduro 265 in Venice – is an invitation to learn to inhabit the vortex of our contemporary moment, rooting artistic production in ecological struggles, and transforming the field of contemporary art into a political territory. To generate a Museum of the Commons we must both question the toxicity that permeates institutions and, at the same time, build non-capitalistic, non-colonial, non-patriarchal, and non-anthropocentric alliances.

Opening on Wednesday 17 April, the first three days of the programme present talks by decolonial thinkers including like François Vergès and Yazan Khalili, screenings of films by Oliver Ressler, the launching of the Art for Radical Ecologies (Manifesto) book, Museum of the Commons Climate Assembly, and an exhibition of props realized in a workshop with Taring Padi, Climate Justice League, and Powernotte. The fourth day features an action on the water in collaboration with Comitato No Grandi Navi (the local Committee Against Big Cruise Ships). The goal of the action is to temporarily occupy an island in an area where Cruise Ships transit and dock, posing a serious threat to the fragile ecosystem of the Lagoon and to a city like Venice already overwhelmed by mass tourism.

Read more on the Institute of Radical Imagination website