The Archive Project: Piecing Together Our 30-year History
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This month, Laguna~B ‘s central theme was The Archive. Together with Marta Dell’Era, a IUAV student specializing in archives, the team of Promemoria digitized and cataloged more than 1,300 items from our historical archive.
In the process, we made some exciting discoveries: Anna Wintour’s greeting cards to Marie; Laguna~B’s 2000 Goti catalog; a series of photos shot by Magnum photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov portraying Marie and Marcantonio in the 90s surrounded by Goto glasses; Laguna~B’s first logo proofs, hand-drawn by Marie in her notebook; and so much more I could fill a whole page.
We are thrilled to announce that, during the Biennale’s opening week – April 16-20, 2024 – our headquarters in Palazzo Brandolini will open to the public for the first time. Archive research and inventory are still ongoing, but we’re preparing to unveil a curated selection of archive gems with you to mark this significant milestone.
For this occasion, Promemoria has also partnered with Accurat to create a site-specific digital installation that will allow visitors to visualize our 30-year history in data.
Come see our offices and headquarters April 16-20, 2024, from 11 AM till noon.
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Marie Méon + Harold Berard’s Murano Upcycling Paris Show
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In 2021, we collaborated with Marie Méon and Harold Berard – a creative couple with a background in art direction, design, and photography – for the project Murano Upcycling, a limited series of totemic lighting fixtures made by assembling abandoned glass pieces selected and recovered from furnaces in Murano. This month, the duo presented the collection at their home studio in Paris, alongside Méon’s beautiful food sculptures (she’s also a talented food designer, as seen in her Manger Manger studio’s work.) Some of Marie Méon + Harold Berard’s playful creations are still available. Contact the studio for more info and inquiries.
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This month’s reading tip comes from Trevor Louw, friend, writer, and gardener who often visits the B~Library.
“ Parallel Encyclopedia #1 is a book by the artist Batia Suter. It has no introduction, apart from the title. It opens with a minimalist print of delicate lines by Stanczak, and ends with a crowd of Chinese protesters during the Cultural Revolution. In between is an almost endless series of images that remind me of Tumblr, which back in the early 2010s, was my main source of culture. It was Instagram before Instagram, an endless curated cascade of images, but without the algorithms, the influencers. A chronological stream, that didn't want to sell me anything, that seemed to exist by dreamlike recombination. Seeing the book has made me revisit an archive of jpegs I saved back then from my feed. A Chinese city skyline in the fog. A photo print of a comet from 1882. A tower wrapped by Christo. A fighter jet parked in the desert in front of a mosque in white stone. Dense pine trees in the dark.
I feel lucky that a book exists that can do something for me that the internet can't anymore.”
The B~Library is an exciting Laguna~B side project. It is a book collection curated (and continuously updated) by @studio.bruno located at Spazio, in Dorsoduro 3276, Venice. Anyone can borrow any book every day from 10 AM to 7 PM. Come and visit!
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Our Connection to the Lagoon
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The WaterLANDS Action Site is a reclaimed salt marsh known as Lago Bastia 2. It is one of many infills constructed with dredged sediments, removed for port maintenance from the main shipping channel and lagoon inlets. The classification of this particular artificial marsh as “medium condition”, based on its current state in terms of erosion, vegetation cover and biodiversity, made it a suitable place for demonstrating the potential benefits of working with nature for wetland restoration that is at the heart of the WaterLANDS initiative. The overall aim is to connect stakeholders and the community, practical know-how and scientific research, experience and education, all in an innovative framework for successfully scaling up efforts – via new public/private partnerships – to revive the wetlands on a landscape scale throughout the lagoon.
Further information on the Vital website.
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COMING UP NEXT MONTH
Open headquarters at Palazzo Brandolini, Venice. April 16 - 20, 2024.
A new limited edition is out next week, on April 5.
Private monthly event to be announced privately. Email us if you want to stay updated.
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Every month we update our Diary with behind-the-scenes photos from our everyday life at Laguna~B.
Check our March album here!
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