AQUA ALTA

2021

Deborah Cornell, visual artist
Richard Cornell, sound artist

"Night fell. Even the darkness was different."Italo Calvino

Aqua Alta is a cautionary work about sea level rise. It is inspired by and based on an earlier in-person installation of prints, transparencies, and sound, created during a residency at Proyecto ACE in Buenos Aires. It is a reimagined, expanded work about climate change. Its form as a video projection is a direct response to the limitations of Covid-19, and is intended for our pandemic-ridden time.

"Aqua alta", the phenomenon of high water that inundates Venice, is exacerbated by climate change, a development that, if unchecked, it increasingly appears, will have disastrous consequences for all life forms. No one knows the eventual effects flooding and destruction may have on cultures and nations, as histories are lost. Aqua Alta reflects on these consequences. The sound is an electronic composition by Richard Cornell, with sources such as include a thunderstorm in a canyon, the altered sound of corvids, the Lutine Bell, a reminiscence of Monteverdi.