by Marco Paolini, Giulio Boccaletti
with Marco Paolini

National Premiere

With "The Factory of the World" (La Fabbrica del Mondo), Marco Paolini, joined by artists, scholars, and communities, created a laboratory for viral stories – a meeting ground for people from diverse professions who are trying to imagine a future that isn't just a repetition of the present. "Mar de Molada" was a first step on this new path, and "Bestiario idrico" (Aquatic Bestiary) is the next.

"Bestiario idrico" talks about rivers and all kinds of creatures. It narrates stories of biological and social life connected to rivers, and of the conflicts and agreements that, centered around river water, have shaped the landscape we now recognize as our own. "Bestiario idrico" invites us to consider rivers and water basins not just as physical landmarks, but as cultural ones as well – to imagine the river as a tree in its entirety. Streams, irrigation ditches, canals, cuts, millraces, and ditches... thousands of waterways feed and regulate the main rivers, forming the roots of the river-tree whose banks are inhabited by living beings, in a close relationship between water and land.