Venice Biennale, Lionfish, and More Than Human Design
Dear Friends,
I hope you’re well. I’m writing to tell you our latest news, starting with an installation opening this week in Venice.
This year, Carlo Ratti, the curator of the Venice Biennale of Architecture invited Vessel, the artists' collective I co-founded with my partner Navine G. Dossos on the island of Aegina, Greece, to create an installation for the 19th International Exhibition. The work was collectively produced in Aegina.
The Only Flowering Plant in the Ocean brings together Vessel's work on local ecologies, sustainable materials, architecture, design, and art in the service of our community and the planet.
Vessel has been investigating the use of seagrass (Posidonia oceanica) in vernacular architecture around the Mediterranean, as well as in contemporary architecture (as in our Saronic Segal building, completed in 2022).
Posidonia and other seagrasses are vital organisms for ocean and planetary health: constructing biospheres, storing carbon, and sustaining marine and shoreline ecologies around the world. For millennia, seagrass has been used by humans in building insulation and for other purposes; it is also under severe stress from direct human activity and anthropogenic climate change.
Historically, the glass merchants of Venice used seagrass as a packing material for their wares, collecting and drying the Posidonia from the Venetian lagoon. In response to this history, Vessel created over a hundred pieces of ceramics from local clay, dug from the land of Aegina, and decorated with images of seagrass life cycles and environmental messages. These vessels were shipped to Venice packed in our local seagrass, in crates built from recycled materials, to be displayed, and returned as a single, circular artwork.
The installation also includes seagrass materials prepared for architectural use, mixed with clay, lime, and cement binders, to form insulation and structural elements, which we have developed for our own use, and to share.
If you’re in Venice, you can find our installation in the Corderie section of the main exhibition, and if you’re around this week, so are we: please say hello!
Team: Navine G. Dossos, James Bridle, Alisa Vincentelli, Alessandro Vincentelli, Danae Tsakona, and Vessel comrades.
Recent Writing You Can Read Now, Online:
Here Come The Lionfish - I wrote about multi-species relationships, the ocean, and coming face to face with climate change and colonialism in my own waters, for the latest issue of Emergence Magazine.
On Being Inside Gaia - I wrote about More-Than-Human design, the history of the Gaia theory, and - yes - seagrass, for the Design Museum’s Future Observatory Journal.
The Denial of Genocide is on the March Everywhere - And, sadly, I wrote about the experience of being punished for my politics in Germany, and the far wider and more urgent context of genocide and fascism on the rise globally.
Current and Upcoming Exhibitions:
Point of View: Balance, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, April - May 2025
Triennale Kleinplastik, Fellbach, May - September 2025
The Art of Navigation, Foto Colectania, Barcelona, June - December 2025
Thanks for reading. Sending you all the very best in these troubled times, in the knowledge that the Earth will heal us, if we let it.
Free Palestine. Protect Trans Kids. For ever and ever,
James
