Plastique FantastiqueTREES & TRACES, installation view, Songhyeon Dong, Séoul, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artists

Plastic Fantastic? Between Ephemerality and Permanence

Annemarie Kok

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During the Venice Biennale 2019, visitors to the Venice Pavilion had the opportunity to enter an inflated tunnel with a translucent skin of plastic film. The tube rested on a layer of water and was squeezed between twelve marble sculptures by Fabio Viale that replicated the wooden posts (briccole) that emerge from the Venice lagoon and serve as markers for navigation. Standing in the water and calling to mind “figures of exodus,” the posts may have reminded the public of the growing threat of rising water levels due to climate change.¹ 1 - Sergio Risaliti, in the catalogue to the exhibition, cited in “Fabio Viale’s bricolas presented by Poggiali Gallery at the 2019 Venice Biennale,” Finestre sull’Arte, 2 May 2019, accessible online. The tunnel, in turn, provided visitors with the oneiric—and possibly life-saving—experience of walking on water, and encouraged them to explore the “melt[ing] together” of architecture, air, water, and skyline.² 2 - Marco Canevacci and Yena Young, Plastique Fantastique: A Journey Through an Ephemeral Realm (Berlin: DCV, 2023), 80.

The immersive passageway, titled Blurry Venice,was created by a team from Plastique Fantastique, which is directed by the Berlin-based architects Marco Canevacci and Yena Young. Blurring boundaries is at the core of Plastique Fantastique’s practice. Here, I explore this ambiguity by focusing on the foggy lines between ephemerality and permanence, and on the role of plastic as a mediator in this regard.