Venice, Fortuny Palace, First Floor
15 december 2007/ 6 january 2008

After Artempo, Palazzo Fortuny re-opens. At the first floor, the collection of paintings, precious fabrics and lamps evoke the work of the artist who lived and worked here.
From 14 December to 6 January, the space will also house Tech-Tile, with twenty or so extraordinary works by the English artist Stephen Bottomley, whose creations are an original form of homage to Mariano Fortuny himself.
The exhibition explores the potential generated by combining computer design with craft skills. It is inspired not only by the “imaginative and ornamental language” of Fortuny but also by that artist’s constant delight in experimentation, in bringing together traditional approaches with innovative methods.
The pendants, bracelets and necklaces which Bottomley creates are veritable sculptures

Venice, Palazzo Fortuny, ground floor
15 December 2007 – 17 February 2008
Laid out on the ground floor of Palazzo Fortuny, these thirtyfive site specific works by master glass-blowers from Murano are organised within a fluctuating system of sounds to form a large installation that explores the themes of light and water.
Suspended luminescence, they bring synthetic materials and silicones together with light, LED and fibre optics. They are introduced by Ganxi, a large, illuminated curtain in hand-crafted boro-silicate glass.
The large installation is comparable to a living organism emanating intelligence and energy. This transforms material into light, sound into multiple sources of movement. In moving through it, one moves back to the original sources of life – and to the source of the artist’s inspiration. The visitor is caught up in a dream-like world of imagination.
Based on primitive and eternal forms, the thirty works occupy the space of the exhibition and evoke thoughts of the depths of both ocean and heavens. Their movement might be that of plankton, or that of the dust which makes up the Milky Way.
Admission to the exhibition is included within the cost of the normal museum ticket. After

The New Year’s Eve marked by theatre: that is one of the novelties of the New Year’s Eve 2007/2008 in Venice: a coordination among the initiatives of the theatres of Venice and Mestre – Toniolo, Goldoni, Fondamenta Nuove – in order to offer the citizens and tourists an optimal arrangement of the shows.
The objective of such initiative – says the responsible for the theatre and shows area of the Town Hall of Venice, Angela Fiorella – is to start up a coordinated action to offer shows in the town, which will assure citizens and tourists of the high quality of productions and an optimal distribution of performances.
And there will really be shows for all tastes:  Whilst poetry will be on the stage at Goldoni Theatre in Venice with the show ‘Bufaplanetes, Poetry in a bubble!’, planned for the evening of 31st December at 9.00 p.m., with a repeat performance on the 1st January at 4.00 p.m. and at 6.30 p.m. Written, directed and interpreted by Pep Bou and proposed by Pantakin Association, Bufaplanetes is a poetry game which takes soap bubbles as its starting point in order to evoke a magic planetary of brilliant colours joining an extravagant humour. In the end, joining the tradition of the concerts of the first day of the year, Theatre Fondamenta Nuove will present, on the 1st January at 6.00 p.m., “Happy New Ears – the other concert of the New Year’s Day”, with the quartet Doppelmoppel, namely two guitarists and two trombonists representing one of the most meaningful and innovative groups of the European jazz. 

31 december 2007Venice is going to stand as candidate for becoming the town of love par excellence and to do that it has bet everything on the organization of the New Year’s Eve 2008. In fact when midnight strikes 200 couples will kiss in St. Mark’s Square, for an event marked by a New Year Day of love.
Marco Balich, namely the artistic director of Venice Marketing Events, a company created following the desire of the Town Hall and the Casino in order to organise and sell the most important Venetian events, had three thousand Euros available and a precise request: to amaze, to leave a mark. An idea was necessary to sell the image of New Year’s Eve as something unique, which cannot be renounced or missed. That is why the idea of the kiss.
The New Year’s Eve 2008 in Venice, just like Balich himself has explained, wants to be a message of peace among the peoples, an hymn to love, maybe the simplest one that can be celebrate, but also the most direct and effective.
Nowadays the most famous New Year’s Eves in the world are the ones of Sidney, London, Paris and New York: Venice is to be placed on the fifth position.
In order to organize the event on 18th and 19th December there will be even a casting to find 200 couples that feel like kissing each other in St.Leonardo, Cannaregio. Those who want to take part in such event can contact the email love2008@kevents.it or call 3928168468. The person who will direct the group kiss is Doug Jack, a choreographer and staging director who has realized the mass movements for six Olympic ceremonies.
THE PROGRAMME: It will start at 10.40 p.m. with the first action that foresees the kiss of 200 voluntary couples. Fifteen minutes afterwards a test action again of group kiss. At 11.45 p.m. third test action, then the countdown of the Clock Tower, the melody of various famous love songs spreading in the air, different choreographic actions and, eventually, twenty seconds after midnight, the total kiss.