When I Breathe, I Swallow the Lagoon/Quando Respiro, Digerisco la Laguna

performance, 2022

When I Breathe, I Swallow the Lagoon chronicles the bonds between humans and non-humans in a toxic environment. It does so by taking participants where the environment of the Lagoon rebels against binary geographical and temporal coordinates: land becomes liquid; emerged islands are part of the seabed; past and future blur into a continuous present.

Set in this amphibious Lagoon, never fully emerged or submerged, the performance winds along the infrastructure of the former ENI refinery in Via dei Petroli in Porto Marghera. Interweaving different characters, places and times, When I Breathe, I Swallow the Lagoon engages with the afterlives of  petrochemical infrastructures to highlight the interconnection between bodies, environments and power structures and rethink responsibility in deep time.