VAZ the project _ eng

Venezia Anno Zero is a project by Andrea Morucchio that is based on the video documentation that from March 2020 to April 2021 the Venetian artist made in his city during various lockdown periods.

The beauty and spirit of the lagoon city have re-emerged since the cessation of all activities related to the mono economy based on the exploitation of mass tourism. Unfortunately, with the end of the restrictions related to the Covid emergency, Venice has plunged back into the nightmare caused by the phenomenon of overturism with even worse effects than those reached in 2019 before the beginning of the first lockdown. 

For the future, due to a criminal political administration of the city, this situation will only get worse. It is a bitter consideration that pushed me to develop a project that, while appearing as a product of pure aesthetics, has a strong civic function since the public, feeling a strong emotion in immersing themselves in the "unreal reality" of Venice represented by the VAZ project, acquires awareness and hopefully determines a reaction to the causes that are leading Venice to its ruin.

Transforming this video diary into an audiovisual work in which the public can be involved and experience even partially the feeling of empathy with the Essence of Venice becomes a project that as a contemporary artist takes on a very precise meaning and purpose: to create and expand awareness in the public visiting the installation of the imminent end of Venice as a city - a civic, environmental and cultural end - that for the economic interests of a greedy political and business clan is being transformed every day more and more into a tourist theme park.

SHORTMOVIE 2020

Last year Morucchio developed a short film - made with a selection of footage from the first three months of the 2020 lockdown - also titled Venezia Anno Zero that won the Pasinetti Award at the Venice Film Festival and was screened for more than two months with great audience participation in collaboration with the Fondazione Archivio Cini.

At this link >>> VAZ 2020 a comprehensive documentation regarding the 2020 short film.

INSTALLATION WORK

For this new project Morucchio instead uses a selection of the best clips - about a thousand - from 15 seconds to a maximum of about 60 seconds - shot during lockdown periods over the course of thirteen months from March 2020 to April 2021.

The name of the video-installation project remains Venezia Anno Zero but it is to all effects an installation work with one or two projections (depending on the size of the spaces available for the installation) in which all the video clips are projected in chronological order, grouped month by month to form a single visual flow.

>>> Link to the playlist of the entire audio video diary 2020/2021. (in progress, 20 chapters for a total of 5 hours of video)

AUGMENTED REALITY

A selection of images extracted from videos, printed and hung on the walls, thanks to an augmented reality application - that visitors can download for free - can become virtual "small monitors" that reproduce the video from which the image is taken. See a short explanatory >>> clip

SOCIAL EXTENSION

The project also includes a social extension with dedicated pages on 
>>> FaceBook, on >>> Instagram and a playlist on >>> YouTube where individual video clips and related still images are uploaded regularly and daily starting this October.

This allows to have an interface on the web constantly updated with content on which to easily scroll and view all the material that is part of the project as well as being useful to create interest and involvement even in the phase prior to the activation of the installation.

PUBLISHING PROJECT

The creation of a book elaborated by the graphic studio Sebastiano Girardi Studio is also foreseen; a limited edition book with an original design made up of images extracted from the videos, also chronologically ordered with a caption that indicates exactly the place, date and time when the shooting was done.

STILLS - Limited Edition Prints

A series of prints of images extrapolated (stills) from the hundreds of video clips that make up the Venezia Anno Zero project. >> see the works

In addition to the image of the Venetian landscape on the print appear indications on the place where it was taken with a map of the city and a 3D view, the date and time and a QR code that allows you to see with your smartphone the video corresponding to the printed image.

This series of works constitute the tangible part of the VAZ project, they are a form of extension, albeit two-dimensional but still physical of the videos and together with the time and location indications become expression / testimony of the sense and concepts behind the project VAZ.

The title is given by the acronym of Venezia Anno Zero, VAZ, followed by the number that corresponds to the video from which the still has been extrapolated.

NFT

The uniqueness of this video documentation, of a Venice never seen before and never to be seen again, has led Morucchio, thanks to the innovative blockchain technology that guarantees the absolute uniqueness of an asset, in this case of a video work, to mine a selection of single video clips to obtain the NFTs of Venezia Anno Zero in 1/1 edition, visible in this collection of >>> Opense.io 

The "scientific" aproach in ordering/cataloguing the video clips, makes them appear as video-sound "findings" that witness an exceptional period, probably unique in the history of the city, documenting the tangible manifestation of the most intimate, profound and involving spirit of the Venice entity.

A temporal parenthesis that drastically blocked the mono-economy of mass tourism, freeing the breath of the city otherwise suffocated by water traffic, queues in the calli and campi, garbage, air pollution and noise that such a mass of tourists and the activities linked to it without controls inevitably cause.

The creation of this video-sound diary is first of all linked to the impulse - still present even after twenty years of activity as a contemporary artist - of the photographer/reporter Morucchio carried out in the nineties who could not but seize the opportunity to document the extraordinary reality that manifested itself just beyond the doorstep of his home.

The video footage and the relative recording of sounds such as the screeching of seagulls, the cooing of pigeons, the lapping of water or the voices and music coming from the houses succeed in expressing and transmitting more than simple photography the sensations felt in this situation.

Venezia Anno Zero through a considerable amount of objective documentation, without special effects or elaborations, only through landscape shots documents and expresses an extraordinary reality manifested over the course of a year, a "swan song-Venice" that becomes a cry of alarm that the author hopes will shake the world to which it belongs.

A last consideration on the title Venezia Anno Zero (Venice Year Zero) is clearly an evocative quotation of Rossellini's neorealistic masterpiece Germania Anno Zero whose shots are not only poetic but express a vision of the soul of the city and its residual inhabitants from which it is hoped a virtuous path can start that reverses the self-destructive trend that has characterized the history of Venice in recent years.