Wunderkammern : Pride

The third of a series of impossible assemblages of artefacts, vignettes and insects questioning the appropriation of culture and the trade in knowledge and power.

In September 1171, Doge Vitale Michiel led an armada of 120 ships out of the Lagoon to attack Byzantium. Venetian ambassadors met Byzantine representatives and agreed a truce, which was a stalling tactic by Manuel. As talks dragged on through the winter, the Venetian fleet waited at Chios. An outbreak of the plague struck down thousands of the Venetians. The Venetian ambassadors then returned empty-handed from Constantinople, their mission had been a total failure.

Vitale had presided over the near-total destruction of the Venetian fleet and was accused of gullibility over falling into the Byzantine trap. He also stood accused of bringing the plague back to the City. He attempted to flee to the convent of S. Zaccaria over the Ponte della Paglia, but near the Calle della Rasse he was stabbed to death by the mob. Venice had not lost a Doge by murder at home for more than 200 years, a fact that caused much soul-searching by the citizens, and led to constitutional reform. In this vignette, his decayed body is illuminated by The Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power - a fresco by Italian painter Pietro da Cortona,.

The artwork is one of a series of studies playing with reconstruction of impossible assemblages. The realisation of this work with the original artefacts, would be politically challenging and physically improbable. Using custom auto-stereoscopic screens, this latest experiment in holography, imagined the illusionary construction of uncomfortable narratives and the virtual repatriation of contested artefacts.

Materials:

8-channel video presented on Alioscopy Lenticular Screens and viewed though custom-built pepper’s ghost vitrines.

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