Punto Zero. An object that wanted to change the World

Punto Zero. An object that wanted to change the world, is an exhibition curated by the students of the School for Curatorial Studies Venice. This event has been created in collaboration with Video Sound Art Milan, a festival and production centre of contemporary art, Coordinated by Laura Lamonea (artistic director and curator) and Thomas Ba (curator). The students have developed a curatorial project investigating the invisible qualities of objects. Through installations, sculptures, sound, and site-specific performative events, the visitor will have the opportunity to confront the nature of the objects that surround us. The exhibition can be visited between the 13 and 21 of May at Istituto secondario di primo grado Pier Fortunato Calvi, located between the Giardini and the Arsenale of the Venice Biennale.

An object is a physical entity, that in its tangibility, contains values, narratives and memories. It is a medium but also an origin, a starting point for narrating and remembering, a punto zero. The space of the school symbolizes the place of our first encounters with socialization, and therefore it is where hierarchies are set and experienced. Reflecting in this way the dynamics of society. Resembling a punto zero where power relations get established through the arrangement of desks, chairs, and other objects.

The objects are charged with both individual and collective memory. They become, through the artists’ interventions, tools to reactivate these memories and evoke new ways of relating to them. The desk, the blackboard, the bell, are therefore protagonists of the performances. Inviting the visitors to reflect upon the power of objects to create relations with society and individuals. Punto Zero is an intervention that aims to involve all visitors in the exhibition by welcoming contributions such as images, texts, sentences and drawings that summarize what was or is an object that changed the world. Creating an archive, all of these contributions will be set up in a dedicated room dealing with the curatorial research that the students have been investigating in the past months.

Punto zero is an object, any. But which object wanted to change the world? 

The artists participating in the exhibition are Alvise Bittente, Oli Bonzanigo, Ludovico Colombo, Marilisa Cosello, Lea Pedri Stocco, Pierluigi Scandiuzzi, Lorenzo Servetti, Davide Zulli.

Send your contribution to curatorialschool@gmail.com by May 9th. We will display your intervention within the exhibition. You can send images, sentences, photographs, and poems, as long as they fit on an A4 sheet. Furthermore, it will be possible to bring the chosen object on display if its dimensions are small.

From 13 to 21 May 2023

Scuola Secondaria di I° Grado Statale

Pier Fortunato Calvi, Istituto Comprensivo

Dante Alighieri

Via Garibaldi 1808, 30122 Venezia

Opening hours: 2.30pm – 7pm

Opening: Saturday 13 May, 17:00