organized by the School of Engineering, University of Pisa, August 26th - September 7th 2024: The Hidden Water of Pisa.

The Shape of Water, 2018. Mixed media on Tyvec. 9’ x 4’ A collaboration by Kathy Bergquist, Dawn Dale, Cindy Deachman, Carol Howard Donati, Petra Halkes, Lynn Hart, Sandra Hawkins, Patricia Kenny, Laurie Koensgen, Doris Lamontagne, Jacqueline Milner, Rene Price, Dan Sharp, Beth Shepherd, Svetlana Swinimer, Shirley Yik. Several members of the RIA CCCC Study group, have created work that relates to environmental and political issues around water. In March, Rene drew intersecting bubbles on a Tyvec piece of paper and we sent it around to the studios of artists from the RIA membership list that had indicated an interest in this collaboration. The result is a gathering of bubbles with drawings and paintings that address particular aspects of water, its use and misuse, its wonder, and terror.

The Venice lagoon is a mutable space, in transition between land and water. It is due to the constant work of modification and maintenance – from large enterprises carried out by the Republic, to widespread micro-interventions by fishermen, millers, and farmers – that it has not disappeared entirely. If the lagoon is a palimpsest where a tangible system of regulatory works has been developed over the last six centuries, then its future will not only need to engage with current strategies and schemes, but with all the projects and ideas that have been historically positioned there. Predicated on recent arguments for an alternative history of Venice – from speculations on the future to design the present, to the enormous historical legacy of designs that can be discovered by studying the evolution of the lagoon – this book explores another possible lagoon based on a series of missed projects and future hypotheses. Venice lagoons conceived and documented but never completed, or only partially realized, offer the opportunity to imagine or legitimize an alternative future. This is approached with the awareness that many design ideas have already accumulated in archives and settled in places, and that the current challenges – from the pressure of tourism, economic crises, health emergencies, environmental degradation, and the risks associated with climate change – are by no means unprecedented.

To the Venetians the sea offered a range of associations, both positive and negative, a duality reinforced by biblical texts. The sea was the route to the riches of maritime trade and the way to the Holy Land, and its waters yielded both fish and salt. On the other hand, seafaring brought the dangers of storms, shipwreck, piracy and war. The sensual qualities of the sea penetrated deeply into Venetian life and culture. This chapter considers how artists from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century addressed the cultural and visual properties of the maritime world, from the mosaics of San Marco to the seascapes of the view-painters of the Settecento. Representations of stormy seas by Palma il Vecchio, Titian and Tintoretto offered a dramatic contrast to sunnier maritime scenes, and mirrored the polarities between the sea’s dangers and benefits.

The evolution of the historical waterways of Venice, Italy, is considered from a transdisciplinary and holistic perspective to analyze and redeem the legacy of forgotten waterscapes and related heritage. Such a cultural and natural legacy reveals some remarkable examples of the Palladian landscape built along inland waterways, rivers, and a fascinating network of channels as 'liquid roads'. The river system dealt with here are watercourses that today flow into the Venice Lagoon (including the Piave, Sile, Zero, Dese, Marzenego, Brenta, Bacchiglione, and Adige rivers), but also the mighty Po River and its tributaries. When investigating the historical linkages between the hydraulic heritage and natural environments, biocultural aspects and aquatic ecosystems appear as an unbreakable unity-in spite of the different approaches to analyze them. The heritage related to Venice's inland waterways will be also explored through the perspective of a 'digital and extended museum' to stimulate multiple plans for a local re-evaluation of water assets and a new groundbreaking holistic vision. Indeed, water museums (both physical and digital museums, as well as eco-museums and institutions that manage built infrastructures and architectures strongly related to water) are key players to bridge past and present water knowledge, educate people, and promote a new culture for sustainable living. This perspective today is formally endorsed by the Resolution XXIII-5 of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP 2018) that aims at improving water awareness education in the frame of Agenda 2030 involving, in particular, water museums. The perspective outlined here influenced the recognition of the above-mentioned resolution to create a global partnership of water museums aimed at re-evaluating and rejuvenating inherited water legacies worldwide. The approach designed to foster sustainable eco-tourism along Venice's inland waterways shows how similar projects aiming to reconnect people to water can be promoted anywhere. Lessons learned from past generations through trial and error approaches in dealing locally with water heritage are today more precious than ever, to educate for sustainable water management in a rapidly changing world and find new solutions that benefit both people and nature.

An exhibition overview published on ephemereye.art

This issue offers a selection of contributions by esteemed authors from the most diverse universities and institutes known for their work and commitment in Environmental Humanities, Ecocriticism, An-imal studies, Blue Sciences, Ethno-Ecology. Alongside them, a great space in this volume has been dedicated to the pioneering, experimental and creative work of younger researchers and postgradu-ates. We therefore propose a long journey through the literature and recent brilliant narratives com-ing from Africa and India, corroborated by exploratory and ethnographic scientific investigations at the ‘edge of the world’, from the distant islands of Scotland (St Kilda) to the Himalayan ridge (Sikkim). A series of Italian case studies document paradoxes and problems of the Sicilian land-scape, of feral tourism in Venice, and of the environmental policies of the lagoons in the Po River Del-ta. A renewed session dedicated to interviews, artistic performance and aesthetics enriches the final part of this volume. Through amazing productions from Australia, India, Italy, Estonia, the artist and the performer present themselves as a new sort of eco-political agents and mediators, in the attempt to process the traumatic anthropogenic ecological disaster and to reintegrate the individual into the living planet.

The natural and human ensemble of Venice and its lagoon, with its peculiar island features, is among one of the most studied urban and environmental systems in the world. This introduction to Shima’s special issue on Venice and its lagoon provides a brief historical and environmental context to this space and a possible platform whereby the local complexity and liminality of wetlands, lagoons and islands gesture to and evoke global themes, conceptual views, and transdisciplinary opportunities. Focusing on key topics like the theatricality of water engineering, the understanding of water rhythms and the recovery of water memories, we introduce the articles presented herein, providing a geo-historical framework for the various interpretations of living, narrating and representing Venice and its lagoon.

Edited by Maddalena Bassani, Giuseppe D’Acunto, Fantina Madricardo The volume presents an overall view of the Venice Lagoon (Italy) focusing on the archaeological area of the Treporti-San Felice Channel and the ancient city of Altinum. Starting from the archaeological traces submerged detected in the analysis and re-elaboration of data through new methods and technologies, the book represents an opportunity to consider various aspects. The volume discusses geo-environmental transformations throughout the centuries, ancient settlements and road systems, and the connections between ancient and contemporary times through architectonic projects and virtual reconstructions. The bool also offers some considerations about relevant Greek and Latin texts and the Classical Tradition, promoting a ‘kaleidoscopic’ vision and understanding of the origin of Venice and of the possible scenarios for the city in the near and distant future.