BugTopia from jib on Vimeo. 

BUGtopia aims to disrupt the elegant neutrality of the Biennale ambience, twisting the public attention from the masterpieces – incarnations of auto-referential rhetoric – to underline the vital aspects of the space and intervene in it with open eyes and creative hands. Throughout a playful pathway, every single visitor can make a contribution to “contaminate the Biennale”, in order to make it a new space to take possession of.

The contamination will take place throughout the various implementations of the “bug” concept: not only a defect or difficulty, but an organism, that spreads fortuitously in the urban fabric, giving place to unexpected phenomena.
As for every game there will be some rules to follow: every player will be given some materials (images, paper, felt-pens, cardboards, glue, scissors…) and she/he can choose to build up or to assemble (with the collage technique) some silhouettes, which represent cross sections of city life.

Leaving her/his bug inside the Biennale’s park, the player becomes the actor of the event and offers her/his personal, customized contribution. This is documented with pictures, put up on an inflatable implant (“Ciccio”) that is the creative workshop where everything begins.

In return, the player will be given a BUGpin, a distinguishing badge of her/his making the Venice Biennale a place closer to the effective social and public dimension of our cities.

BUGtopia is part of the subject "Public space and the economy of attention" tought at NABA. It was about being creative guerrilla communicator. First sketches were mostly about politics in Italy expressed in different ways of under-ground communication. However, at the very end of the course we have been given an opportunity to go to the Bieannle of Architecture as part of NABA's workshop collaborate with interactiondesign-lab. The concept has then started to analyze the fair and criticize it and then the Workshop is about to arouse public to express their thoughts through hand-made objects created by themselves based on materials that we provided.

At the end of the workshop, it was such an extraordinary experience seeing people that we do not know enjoying making things and expressing their comments on their little art-piece. People were at all ages and all occupations. There were as much kids as adults and older lads. Some of BUGart were quite aggressive and some others were as much adorable.

Environment design, Graphics Design