Biennale College Teatro / Morana Novosel - Fluid Horizons

Drawing inspiration from the environmental pessimism of the Dark Mountain Manifesto, Morana Novosel, born in 1987 and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, imagines an uninhabitable Venice in her site-specific performance, Fluid Horizons. Fascinated by the concept of failure sustained by the Manifesto, but without embracing the extremism of its authors Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, Morana Novosel wonders: “What would art be like if we really accepted the idea that humanity can no longer reduce the impact of climate change – as some say? What is the proper epitaph for a city? How do we say goodbye? How do we grieve for its disappearance?”

As ricci/forte write in the motivation for which they selected the project: “Novosel uses the city of Venice to mourn the loss of humanity; climate change, sea level rise, greenhouse gasses and global warming are dragging this humanity so serene in its deafness towards a renewed concept of Atlantis. Perhaps Novosel’s encampment of communication devices arises as an expanse of sunken treasure, to tell us what we had become, testifying to man’s future: the end of civilisation is not the end of the world; the loss of our communication habitat has turned us into distrustful molluscs. Morana Novosel’s performance restores the residual capacities we can throw back into the fray for a human revolution”.