Concept

While the sirens of ancient Greek mythology were bird-women, they were conflated with aquatic mermaids only later in history during the medieval era and were frequently associated with shipwrecks and drownings in the popular imaginary, luring sailors to their deaths, or imagined as benevolent and protective spirits of the sea. More recently, they have been reimagined as environmental guardians of the oceans, as bodies of water and fluid gender, giving voice to the impacts of the Anthropocene that manifest in marine debris, ocean deoxygenation, endocrine disruption, ecosystem collapse, multi-species extinction, and the unequal burden of environmental harm.

The city of Venice and its lagoon have become a nexus of these impacts, being particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels, sinking foundations and extreme weather events. Sirens give warnings when the high tide reaches Venice. But rather than understanding sirens as harbingers of disaster, we would like to explore their potential for the artistic imagination of other life forms, creating a "sonorous cosmos" (Jane Bennett) in which we are both lost and find our place anew, or invent it.

Through a parallelism with the specific features of film experience, the song of the sirens can be transformed from attraction and warning into a vehicle of daydreaming and lucid imagination. We are especially interested in enchantment becoming a collective and polyphonic practice of experiencing space, endowed with abilities related to loss, care, and healing, and to the exploration of more-than-human relationality.

The panel discussion

For the second event in the series «Enchanting Architecture: Expanding the film experience out of the black box», the curators Fabienne Liptay (University of Zurich) and Giuseppe Di Salvatore (Filmexplorer) gather artists, curators and scholars from international and local communities for a public panel discussion conceived as a polyphonic talk on sirens as guardians of the waters, on the acoustic experience of the city and the landscape, and on the imagination of a sonic pluriverse in dialogue with film. The invited guests on the panel are Ruth Baettig, Elena Biserna, Alice Jasmine Crippa, Magali Dougoud, and Pauline Julier.

PANEL DISCUSSION | 2/10/2024 | 18:30-20:30

Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice

The public panel discussion will be held in English and Italian and will take place at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi in collaboration with Pro Helvetia Venice and will be followed by an aperitif. After the event, a written text documenting the talk will be published.

The panel discussion is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of the research project «Exhibiting Film: Challenges of Format».

Film streaming

To accompany the panel discussion with a filmic experience, the curators have selected a series of films on sirens, waters and sounds, which will be screened free of charge for participants and other interested persons between 2 and 3 October.

For more information and mandatory registration, please write to