TBA21–Academy / Ocean Space presents Riverberi Festival. Words, Sounds and Performances with the Lagoon, taking place from Friday 9 to Sunday 11 October 2026.
This three-day festival brings together performances, workshops, a citizens’ assembly, screenings, and opportunities for dialogue and exchange around regenerative processes, ecological activism, and political ecology. It explores the present, past, and future of the Venice Lagoon, bringing together artists, researchers, and the local human and more-than-human community.
The festival provides an opportunity to bring several projects to a close while opening up new spaces for dialogue around ongoing and future initiatives. It also offers a preview of the upcoming season at Ocean Space, which will henceforth adopt the regenerative Zoöp model.
On Saturday 10 October, from 4:30 to 7pm, the newly established Initiative for the Rights of the Venice Lagoon will present the first draft of a law aimed at recognizing the rights and legal personhood of the Lagoon, during the second Citizens’ Assembly for the Rights of the Venice Lagoon, co-organized with NICHE and IDRA as part of the Nature Speaks initiative.
The day’s program will continue at 7pm with the launch of Ocean Space as the first Zoöp in Italy. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Director of the Zoönomic Institute, and curator and researcher Chiara Famengo will explore the development of the Zoöp as an organizational model designed to represent the interests of more-than-human entities, and will explain what this means in practice.
From 8pm, Sonic Lagoon will feature cellist and composer Anne Bourne, sound artist and researcher Letizia Artioli, and artists Jasmine Alakari and Jakob Kukula of the Symbiotic Lab collective. The performance program invites audiences to immerse themselves in the sounds of the Venice Lagoon and other bodies of water, reflecting on our relationship with water.
Riverberi Festival is curated and produced by TBA21–Academy, with the support of Fondazione di Venezia and NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities.
