Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sixty Minute Man

Venice Biennale 2000
Casagrande & Rintala

The 60 Minute Man was a temporary collage of biological and industrial streams of waste produced by society.


The barge was found out of duty and filled with mud and dirt in the port of Chioggia in the Laguna of Venice. We took the ship ashore and made it water proof again. Some cuttings was done into the central axis in order to create a series of interior spaces.

- See the video

We also tracked down where the digested sludge goes out of Venice - what happens when you flush a toilet. All the material gets collected into one point and then treated by Dottore Codato. We asked him how much Venice produces human waste annually and then took the number down to 60 minutes worth fo the material which we biologically cleaned and composted and then took into our boat as the topsoil for a small forest of oaks.


The compost was covered with a layer of white stones from the Alpine rivers so that the people wouldn't know on what they are actually standing.


In the last room there is a marble stone on which is carved: "This park has been planted on sixty minutes worth of human waste produced by the city of Venice."


The installation was created on the special request of the director of the Biennale architect Massimilliano Fuksas to comment on the theme of the special exhibition Citta Less Aesthetics More Etchics and was nominated as the best realized project of the Biennale 2000 by Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times.

- Video

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