De)ossigenazione is a performance that explores the devastating impact of eutrophication on the fragile ecosystem of the Black Sea while simultaneously conveying a message of hope and regeneration. 

Created during an artist residency in Sozopol, Bulgaria, as part of the international project EMPACT: Empathy and Sustainability – The Art of Thinking Like a Mountain, the piece features a Bulgarian girl as its central figure, symbolising the new generations and their connection to the future of the planet. No one better than her, deeply tied to the Black Sea’s context, could embody the transformation and rebirth that De)ossigenazione aims to communicate.

 

The performance begins with the girl motionless, wrapped in a green cocoon, symbolising the anoxia caused by eutrophication. Her movements are initially slow and laboured as if the air is too dense to breathe. Gradually, she starts to create space, allowing oxygen to flow. The green fades, giving way to blue, and red gloves emerge from the edges of the cocoon, referencing the red algae of the Phyllophora genus, once abundant in the Black Sea. These algae, crucial to marine biodiversity, were decimated by eutrophication, but in this performance, they reappear as a symbol of rebirth.

The dance culminates on a completely blue fabric, symbolising a restored sea, where the graceful and powerful movements of the girl evoke the return to ecological balance and the revival of marine life in the Black Sea.

 

The title De)ossigenazione refers to the oxygen depletion caused by eutrophication; the parentheses imply the potential for recovery, symbolising the hope of restoring oxygen levels and balance to marine ecosystems, as depicted in the performance.

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* Eutrophication is the result of an excess of nutrients, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, which come from agricultural fertilizers, industrial discharges, and urban runoff. The accumulation of these nutrients causes uncontrolled growth of algae and phytoplankton, whose death and decomposition consume large amounts of oxygen, creating oxygen-depleted areas – “dead zones.” In these areas, marine life cannot survive, and ecosystems collapse, leading to the loss of biodiversity.  

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