Cosimo Ferrigolo dissolves boundaries to challenge us to live in a more inclusive and inter-connected way. He speaks to us from his home-studio in Venice about how fluidity permeates his work.

We met when I visited the Venice Biennale Architecturra last year. I was in Venice as one of five creative directors of the Australia Pavilion 2023 exhibition unsettling Queenstown.

In this episode we cover:

• how living in Venice takes on a political meaning

• how Cosimo’s passion for architectural spaces shifted his career from theatre set design to performance art as he was more interested in listening to abandoned spaces than creating a set in a blank canvas

• Cosimo’s involvement in Metaforte, the former Austrian naval fort turned artists live-in studio, in the Venezia lagoon

• blurring the boundaries on fact and fiction,

• the periphery’s relationship with the centre, and

• Cosimo’s shared feeling between his work and childhood

Biography

Cosimo Ferrigolo is a theatre stage manager and performance artist who studied architecture and urban design.

His interest in how artists work in urban spaces and the stories they reveal is influenced by his background in theatre set design and performance studies. He always works collaboratively and uses an interdisciplinary approach to dissolve the boundaries of how we experience the world, raising more questions than providing answers.

Since 2021 he has been the stage manager for the OHT theatre company. In 2020 he co-founded BARdaDino, a shared studio and cultural space in Venice. Since 2017 he has collaborated with MetaForte Association, a cultural urban regeneration project through art and housing in Cavallino-Treporti VE, Italy.