Pulse Red | Venezia

PULSE RED

September 7 - 13, 2004 | light projections | Punta della Dogana, Venezia

Conceived for Progetto Borders 
Curated by Aurora Fonda
Organized by A+A Gallery
In collaboration with IUAV
Text in catalogue by Francesca Colasante, Andrea Morucchio

Project Description

PULSE RED, a public art project by Andrea Morucchio, illuminated the Golden Globe of the Punta della Dogana with an intermittent red light projected by four synchronized dimmer spotlights.
This luminous pulse transformed one of Venice’s most iconic architectural symbols into a powerful visual signal, visible across the San Marco Basin.

Through this minimal yet intense gesture, Morucchio created a work of great scenic and conceptual impact—an ephemeral intervention that redefined the symbolic value of a historical landmark.
By choosing to focus exclusively on the globe crowning the Dogana da Mar, designed by Giuseppe Benoni in 1677, the artist isolated a centuries-old emblem - related to the activity and function performed for centuries by the dogana / customs underneath the sphere - of commerce and exchange, investing it with new meaning.

Conceptual Framework

In continuity with his earlier multimedia installation EIDETIC BUSH (2003)—which explored the cultural and ecological significance of fire in Aboriginal landscapes—Morucchio once again engages in a dialogue between site, history, and meaning. However, in PULSE RED, the natural environment gives way to the urban and historical architecture of Venice itself, as the artist interacts directly with the city’s symbolic and communicative core.

“The Golden Globe as a point of attraction for those coming by sea to Venice and the Customs House as point of contact with the rest of the world, historic place of exchange, storage and classification. The extreme point where information/knowledge that travels “alongside” goods coming from most parts of the world with which Venice had commercial relations was prepared and then later broadcast to the city and the rest of the known world.”
(Colasante & Morucchio, 2004)

Morucchio reinterprets this node of exchange as both transmitter and receiver, turning the globe into a metaphorical antenna. Once a point of departure for goods and ideas, it now becomes a pulsing receptor of global signals—an antenna-screen that “intercepts the electromagnetic signals of today’s communication flows and absorbs their intelligibility, reducing them to a simple flashing beam.”
Through the rhythmic repetition of light evokes the paradox of contemporary media: the excess of information that erodes meaning, the continuous transmission that borders on noise.

For several nights, the Golden Globe at the tip of the Dogana pulsed arrhythmically with red light, transforming a historic nexus of maritime trade into a metaphorical signal of alarm—a heartbeat of crisis.The pulsation suggested both vitality and distress, evoking the collapse of contemporary mass communication systems: networks that, while incessantly transmitting, risk imploding under the weight of their own excess, suffocating genuine meaning.

“Allegory, red alert, a system on the edge of collapse, the imposition of propaganda, pervasive, the rhythm of relentless bombardment of information, repeatedly question the individual’s capacity to understand and filter messages.”
(Colasante & Morucchio, 2004)

Interpretation

PULSE RED thus acts as both warning and reflection, an intervention that uses visibility to question visibility itself.
By exploiting the symbolic and spatial prominence of the Punta della Dogana, the work “inserts an antagonistic message into the mainstream, appropriating its codes of behaviour.”
It subverts spectacle to reveal its own fragility, proposing instead a moment of introspection and critical awareness.

“In this case the spectacularisation of the artistic gesture works in the opposite way—to affirm the necessity for an examination of conscience, usually blurred on such a large scale.”
(Colasante & Morucchio, 2004)

Ultimately, this “tiny intervention of public art resounds through three elements: architecture, history and the spirit of a place.”
PULSE RED stands as a lucid reflection on the nature of communication, visibility, and power—an ephemeral yet enduring signal from the heart of Venice, reminding us of the urgent need to see, and to understand, anew.