Acqua Alta
Deborah Cornell

Acqua Alta describes the flood that occurs in Venice when the storms and tides of the Adriatic are chained with the environmental changes produced by human action on the territory. Scientists predict similar global effects due to global warming, with unknown consequences.

Cornell’s installation at the Sala Políglota at ´ace intends to reflect the effects of these consequences on human life. The images of the water were taken on some of the artist’s trips to India, the North Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. The images and texts give the installation a historical framework of the different human cultures: an Aboriginal legend, a detail from a painting by Bellini, a city in Arizona affected by a dust storm, a poetry by Borges, the masks of Venice, La Shakespeare’s Tempest and contemporary texts by scientists and artists.

The exhibition is completed by an electronic composition by Richard Cornell, which includes sounds of a storm in a canyon in Mexico, a flock of crows, crickets, a bell -reminiscent of Monteverde- and Nauset Beach in the Atlantic Ocean.