WHEN SEEDS BECOME TORPEDOES

Episode 14 has its origin in a specific place of Venice: Calle de la Cereria, 734. This is the former Botanical Garden of Venice, converted and transformed over time and finally abandoned.
Perhaps it is one of those last corners of the historic city that is now wild, uncultivated and basically in ruins. In the urban fabric, it is an invisible place, forgotten, but one that Simone Scardino gives us access to through a layered research process that combines archival sources, images and material recovered through nocturnal expeditions. The exhibition includes several reference points, that are concrete, solid and political to comment on the intertwining of nature and technology that this place has hosted.
Simone Scardino began developing the research during the In-Edita 3 residency in 2023, funded and supported by the Venetian galleries Marina Bastianello Gallery, Gallerie Alberta Pane, and Ikona Gallery.
AARDUORK intercepted Simone Scardino's process and proposed a second chapter of research to give space to a practice that takes the form of images, seed bombs and video installations.
Simone Scardino frames his research with the words: ‘the botanical garden is like a nature factory where there is no “authentic nature” to protect, but a living system that also includes human activities. It can show the intricate web of relationships, including conflicts and grey areas between conservation and human intervention.’ The botanical garden in Venice, destroyed at the end of the 19th century and replaced by a torpedo factory, bears witness to the sharp and ruthless transition from the production of plant life for scientific purposes to the production of instruments of aggression and destruction. The tale of this past brings us back to the current ecological and social crisis of our time through a new narrative that remixes the different pasts of the Botanical Garden of Venice and realises a workshop for the production of seed torpedoes within AARDUORK. The exhibition explores these tensions, telling a new story of place that invites us to imagine the botanical garden as an object for ecological and critical reflection, where nature is neither abstract nor passive, but a living and active factory, capable of redefining relations between human and non-human.

Simone Scardino was born in 1995 in Venaria Reale in the province of Turin, where he graduated with a thesis entitled Spazio Profondo - Fondamenti per una Coesistenza Gentile (Deep Space - Foundations for a Gentle Coexistence), at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts. His research is deeply linked to the relationship between the new anthropology and the understanding of the ecologies of different ecosystems, which merge into artistic practices inspired by his experience as an activist and farmer. Over the years, he has developed an experimental and transdisciplinary practice, including through workshops and hybrid participatory art laboratories. He participated in ‘Transtopia Luogo dell'Oltre’ - Artistic Practices of Urban Resistance, in collaboration with VERSO at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (2022), Micro - Geographies of Engagement, Città dell'Arte, Fondazione Pistoletto Biella (2022), and ‘Urbi, Erbe et Orbi’ in collaboration with UNIDEE Academy and ArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem, NL (2022). He took part in a series of artistic residencies including Bivacco Urbano Progetto Diogene in Turin (2021) and during the school year 2021/2022 he was invited to hold a workshop/seminar entitled ‘6 m² - Unit of measurement against de-forestation’ in collaboration with PAV - Parco Arte Vivente for the public art course of the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin.