The Naples Preennale of Water 2024

June 23 – July 7, 2024

The Preennale of Water (“Preennale dell’acqua”) is a trans-disciplinary gathering and a collaborative initiative by Common Views, together with partners in Naples and across the Mediterranean region. The Preennale, which is taking place in the summer of 2024, invites artists, architects, activists, writers, researchers, designers, planners and others to imagine, discuss, create and design effective and durable responses to a range of social and environmental issues relating to water, both locally and in the wider Mediterranean region.

A central aim of the Preennale is to explore the creation a new grassroots Biennale of Water that will take place in Naples in 2026 and will tour in future to different cities along the Mediterranean coast.

The Commoning Lab

As part of the Preennale gathering in Naples, Common Views will be holding a two-week-long Commoning Lab in which artists and activists who work in the field of Commoning will be taking part in an open exchange, with the intention of advancing new perspectives for Naples’ urban environment, drawing on the overarching themes of interconnection, complexity and emergence. Commoning Lab participants include persons whose work, individually or as part of existing collectives, involves social and environmental practices, site-specific and participatory practices, community-engaged arts, creative interventions and performance in public space.

The Commoning Lab program includes group sessions as well as extended periods for creative research and self-practice. Lab participants will have the opportunity to work individually or in groups towards a presentation of their work, reflecting their contribution and explorations of the themes examined during the Lab, and to present these as part of a concluding Preennale exhibition, as well as in Naples’ outdoor public spaces.

Some of our proposed inquiries for the Commoning Lab’s collective explorations are:

  • the enclosure of Naples’ water resources;
  • the generating of public participation and engagement;
  • water related sustainability;
  • urban water utopias;
  • more-than-human water perspectives;
  • hacking of existing systems and novel approaches and technologies;
  • the underground water commons;
  • animating local water histories;
  • cultural water landscapes;
  • developing collaborative working methods;
  • and more.

The Preennale of Water Program

In addition to the Commoning Lab held by Common Views, the Preennale will also include a design workshop led by CoolCity, as well as a series of presentations, site tours and round table discussions, which participants are welcome to attend.

Schedule Week 1Schedule Week 2

For additional information and the event’s full program, check out the Preennale pdf brochure below:

The Location

The epicenter of the Preennale in Naples is the area of Porta Capuana and the Lanificio, a former textile factory within a XIV century cloister. The site is located next to the historical city gate, the arrival point of the ancient aqueduct of Bolla that fed water from Mt. Vesuvius into the city for over two millennia. The site, which is part of the Santa Caterina a Formiello Church, now houses Preenale’s hosts laboratorio architettura nomade (LAN), as well as art galleries, social cooperatives, laboratories, apartments, offices and music clubs

Preennale of Water Partners

The Common Views collective founded in 2019 by artists David Behar Perahia and Dan Farberoff, applies a commoning, social-ecological perspective to arts engagement. The collective carries out site-specific, participatory projects worldwide, addressing the relationship between communities in the context of their relationship to their environment.

Laboratorio Architettura Nomade is a non profit association based in Naples founded in 2004, comprising thinkers, artists, and architects who experiment with new research concepts and ideas about urban life and built environments, through the production of projects, events and workshops.

CoolCity is an international school that was founded in 2021 to revisit ancient and revise contemporary technologies for the creation of a new eco-culture in the climate endgame. It is opposed to the privatization and materialization of urban spaces, and wants to imagine future communities and myths in the post-anthropocentric cities.

Commonspace is a collaborative, interdisciplinary planning and design group based in Athens, established in 2012. The wide range of Commonspace members and associates form a network of experts and scientists involved in urban and spatial planning and environmental management.

Additional Biennale Project Partners
Casaforte, ABC Water Company, Made in Cloister, Laboratorio di Urbanistica e Progettazione Territoriale University Federico II Naples (LUPT)

The Commoning Lab and Common Views’ participation at the Preennale is supported by the Culture Moves Europe mobility fund, funded by the European Union and implemented by the Goethe Institute.

This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

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© 2021 Common Views – Design by Dan Farberoff

Common Views Declaration on the War in GazaComming Lab – The Manual of Commoning