The Commoning_Lab at the Naples 2024 Preennale of Water

In the summer of 2024, the Common Views collective co-hosted the Preennale of Water (Italian: Preennale dell’Acqua) in Naples, a new, transdisciplinary gathering of like-minded artists, architects, activists, writers, researchers, designers, planners, and others. Participants were invited to imagine, discuss, create, and design effective and durable responses to a range of social and environmental issues relating to water, both locally and across the Mediterranean region.

The Common Views collective have been exploring issues of water as a precious resource – of one’s access to it or lack thereof, as well as our connection or lack of connection to this vital and important element, and how these reflect our attitudes to one another, to life, nature and the planet. This is explored over a series of extended site-specific projects worldwide. During these projects, Common Views have been developing their original methodology of Environmental Reconciliation, which seeks to address conflictual issues and settings by reframing them within a social-ecological and post-anthropocentric perspective, and through the application of participatory and socially-engaged arts practices.

The initial idea for the Preennale of Water gathering in Naples was proposed by Common Views during their residency a year earlier, in the summer of 2023, at the laboratorio architettura nomade (LAN) – a Naples-based, non-profit association experimenting with new research concepts and ideas about urban life and the built environments. The gathering aimed to form a first step in creating a new kind of biennial event that would have Commoning¹ at its very core and as an integral aspect of its ethos, and as a way to further explore our approach of Environmental Reconciliation in the fascinating and complex setting of Naples’ urban water environment.

The Preennale offered an opportunity for potential stakeholders to come together to formulate the necessary structures and methodologies for the biennial gathering that will eventually tour around the region of the Mediterranean. The proposed biennial gathering, which would address the acute issues relating to water that are shared by its many, diverse communities and ecosystems, was conceived by Common Views as a collaborative initiative, together with LAN, and CoolCity – an international school that advances the creation of a new eco-culture in the climate endgame – and additional groups in Naples and from across the Mediterranean basin.

The Commoning_Lab

During the Preennale, in June and July 2024, Common Views led a two-week-long Commoning_Lab, focusing on water as a collectively shared resource, together with 15 local and international researchers, artists, and activists who work in the field of Commoning. Together, we explored effective and durable responses to a range of social and environmental issues relating to water., We engageding in a collaborative exchange that allowed for a horizontal discourse, in an atmosphere of inclusion and diversity, with participants sharing their knowledge and skill-sets and advancing Commoning perspectives for Naples’ urban water environment.

Together, we listened to WATER, we discussed and exchanged ideas about WATER and we reflected on WATER. Some of the collective explorations that we undertook addressed:

WATER and its heritage in the Neapolitan context; and its contribution to human & other-than-humans’ wellbeing;

WATER & its associated symbolic and spiritual values and rituals;

WATER & the need for collective caring processes;

The need to reach reconciliation with WATER, physically, ethically, and symbolically;The need to change people’s perceptions and values about WATER;

The need to put ahead a collective vision for alternative WATER realities;

The need to work in many local contexts to allow local communities to research, listen to WATER and act for WATER.

Commoning_Lab Guiding Principles, Themes, Practices & Methods

As an initial foundation for our lab, Common Views proposed a collection of guiding principles, under the triple heading of Interconnection & Relating, Complexity, and Emergence. These principles are ones that Common Views have formulated during our previous projects and served us as a framework for establishing a common ground from which to begin our collective lab explorations. The guiding principles are:

Interconnection & Relating

Attitude of care, Inclusion, Observing vs acting, Conviviality, Sharing is caring, Commoning, More-than-human commons, Social inclusion / Diversity, Biological inclusion / Diversity, ‘"Feeling’" one's way around a problem rather than thinking a solution, Embodiment, Water without / Water within, Connecting through rituals.

Complexity

Resilience is messy, Collaboration with nature, City & nature boundaries: nature sprawl into urban landscape vs urban sprawl into natural landscape, Water & land boundaries, Organisation in negotiation.

Emergence

The self / individual as both an interdependent collective of ‘"individuals’" and as part of a greater collective, Collective myth, Collective agency.

_____

In addition to the above foundational principles, we also proposed an initial list of potential themes we might explore together, individually, in collaboration within small teams, or as a group. This was proposed as an expandable list, to which lab participants were encouraged to add their own interests and foci for enquiry. These themes included:

• Animating local history, water symbology, etc
• Public engagement with water enclosure situations
• Water system hacking
• Water morality
• Water quality
• Water equality
• Water novel technologies
• Urban water sustainability
• Water access & distribution (as reflecting politics / economics / culture)
• Urban water utopias
• More-than-human water perspectives
• Developing collaborative ways of working and decision making
• The future biennale from a Commoning perspective: purpose, themes and alternative, collective structures
• The ‘underground Underground’: the Underground space as Commons, Commoning as an underground action.
• Hydrophillia / Hydrophobia
• Draughts & floods,
• …

_____

And lastly, we put forward a collection of potential practices, approaches and methods that we might use together in our lab explorations. These included:

• Exploring the role of the ‘public’,
• Objects of mediation,
• Playing with interactive scores,
• Context specific games,
• Site-specific exploration,
• Action research,
• Public walks,
• Context related meals / aperitif
• Public performance / intervention: ‘Tasting’ the WATERs,
• Embodiment practice and deep presence,
• Story-making / Story-telling,
• The role and function of ritual,
• Living labs,
• Mapping the connections (WATERways / ecosystems / plant species etc),
• Mapping Agents & Relationships,
• Resonance Mapping,
• Collective Readings,
• Street Canvassing / Questionnaires,
• “Nonkrong²” - hanging out,
• Public talks / Panels / Symposia,
• Co-creation Workshops
• Resonant points Mapping,
• Collective Readings,
• Street Canvassing / Questionnaires,
• ‘Nonkrong’ - hanging out
• Public talks / Panels / Symposia,
• Co-creation Workshops
• Collective Readings,
• Street Canvassing / Questionnaires,
• Public talks / Panels / Symposia,
• Co-creation Workshops
• …

Commoning_Lab Conversations

Our lab schedule contained group sessions, in which we engaged in conversations around the various research themes, as well as group walks and site research led by different lab members. Our time also included opportunities for exploration, independently or in collaboration, as participants discovered shared areas of interest and inquiry.

Below are some excerpts from the transcript we took of the conversations held during our collective group sessions, condensed into short headings (See footnote for full names of participants).

Tuesday Morning 25/6/2025

GL:³

I’m interested in how rituals create togetherness and meaning.

MC:

I’m interested in Lanificio and Santa Caterina a Formielo’s location’s strong relationship to water. In my work I deal very often with the relationship of water and metal.

There used to be a garden of aromatic plants at the monastery of Santa Caterina a Formielo.

I see the location’s historical role as a distribution point for water from the aqueduct into the city as a metaphor for its current role as a catalyst for change.

CP:

The relationship of the residents to water mirrors their relationship to the city’s past.

MC:

Another aspect of the residents’ relationship to water is the issue of the city’s connection to and disconnection from the sea.

DB:

It is like a skin between the above ground and the underground, between the accessible and the inaccessible.

DF:

The skin is often very thin, made up of prohibitions and regulations, and can be transgressed.

The city feels very disconnected from its port. I wonder how one could go about reestablishing that connection.

GL

My relationship to the sea and my work with ritual is very much about feeding and providing a sense of value. I believe people’s spirit requires feeding through the senses: through smell, through views, through physical interaction with the location and the space. In addition, I believe in helping people discover where real value lies.

MC:

Along the west coast there is an issue of the seafront being held by private ownership.

DF:

This is a kind of physical “Paywall” (like on the internet).

MC:

There is la Gaiola association, which enables access, and after Posilipo there is Irva - a historical port. But overall there is a kind of a rhythm along the coast of industry-commercial-private-industry-commercial-private.

GL:

Neapolitans are very practical people. They adopt new things once they understand their value. It’s important to help them feel and understand what is of value for them and for the city.

AK:

I don’t see any free publicly available drinking water sources on the streets of Napoli. The old fountains are mostly dry or not accessible.

DB:

Going back to the idea of “skin”: we should explore where the points are that are accessible to the public or where access can be easily facilitated.

MC:

How do we express that there are underlying global issues, such as mass migration from Africa to Italy, for example, due to lack of water?

DB:

Another thing we should consider is how to create continuity. Performance as practice is ephemeral. How do we introduce continuity, repetition and leave traces?

DF:

One way we could approach this is to create rituals that perpetuate themselves. But we are still in the idea harvesting stage.

MP:

I’m inspired by traditional ways of taking care of the space between private and public - as in Sardinia where residents look after the sidewalk in front of their homes.

Tuesday Afternoon 25/6/2024

MP:

I’m very much interested in the relationship and differences between rituals and habits.

GL:

To understand the value of water it is often necessary to experience its absence. I can imagine an action of not drinking as an intervention.

DF:

There could be a performance of empty cups on a long table, with waiters serving from empty jugs.

GL:

For example, at “the fountain that doesn’t work yet” (at one of Napoli’s many derelict fountains).

In Napoli you can see residents who live at street level spraying the road in front of their homes with water in order to cool the ambient temperature.

Reviving the fountains will introduce a cooling effect.

MC:

I find the current idea of air-conditioning really absurd: I cool down my place by heating up the common space.

I’m interested to know where GL goes into the sea in Naples, because I perceive the whole seafront is extremely polluted.

MP:

I go into the sea all along the entire stretch between Litoranea and Gaiola. The currents in the bay flow from west to east, so these areas west of the port are relatively clean.

DB:

I think we can describe what we’re doing as a field library.

DF:

And at the end of the two weeks of the lab, we should announce the beginning of the long term process.

AK:

I think what we’re doing is a kind of Urban Acupuncture - poking at the key points to investigate and bring about change by triggering a reaction.

DF:

This is a kind of alternative urban healing approach! We could also explore what applying homoeopathic principles to urban healing might look like.

MC:

I feel that there is a very strong energy in Naples because of the underlying volcanic explosiveness. When it is stuck it can come out in a violent, negative way, but it can also be channelled to bring about positive change.

MP:

When we’re talking about public engagement, who is the community? How many communities are there? How do we connect to them? This is important when planning a large scale project. It is necessary to find ways to start a dialogue.

MC:

Lanificio is a great Location for this because it’s at the meeting point of many neighbourhoods and communities: Borgo Sant Antonio, Garibaldi, Porta Capuana, Porta Nolana - Mercato, Forcella, Centro Storico and Sanita.

We should look for interaction in public space.

DA:

I’m involved in discovering abandoned places, in combating polluting landfill and garbage sites and in exploration through walking practice.

AK:

The toxicity of the area has an impact on my foraging practice. We cannot use the wild plants to offer a communal meal.

DA:

There is an informal group of foragers in Naples who you can contact to ask: Erbacce (weed).

MP:

How do we encourage an attitude of care?

DB:

We can think of creating some kind of campaign.

DF:

This could be a kind of positive “brain-washing” approach. Wash the mind from all the “dirt”.

I think an attitude of care can be developed when focusing on encouraging love and commitment as motivators rather than on financial value.

DB:

Instead of a biennale, which is a problematic concept, we could aim to create a “care-nnale”.

DF:

How about a “Cura-nnale dell’Acqua”?

Some of the many additional ideas and concepts that participants brought up during the lab are listed below, presented here in condensed form. These served as starting points for the developing of individual projects, actions, and interventions:

“Rüyanı suya anlat.” - Tell your dreams to the water – A popular Turkish saying.

“Send your bread across the face of the water, for in the end it will return to you.” – A popular saying.

Reviving the old lavatoio (public hand-washing places that historically served the city's residents):

“Washing your dirty laundry in public.”

Washing clothes or feet of the public at the city's derelict fountains.

Taking water scarcity to the extreme: eg. performance of empty cups on a long table, with waiters serving from empty jugs.

Sign: “This fountain isn’t working – yet.”

Fake re-activation of a fountain with no water or of an empty swimming pool. Inviting people to wash/swim, but there is no water. Instructions for how to swim in an empty pool.

Carrying water to the fountain to re-activate it.

Using the fountains to water the plants.

Water as a thermodynamic regulator.

Naples’ residents who live at street level spraying the road in front of their homes with water in order to cool the ambient temperature.

A campaign of positive “brain-washing”.

Care-annale / Cura-nnale dell’Acqua.

Creating a personhood/personification of Naples’ connection to water (“Mare-donna”)

Urban skin-care

The “urban skin” and “urban acupuncture”

Feng-shui of the urban space - urban wind-water flow as meridians.

What are the different senses through which we experience water?

Re-introducing the calming sound of water to the city. Re-introducing the coolness of water to the city.

The ancient Neapolis being constructed with Pythagorean principles

Water-tasters (sommelier).

Aquaioli – historical Neapolitan water sellers

Water-seller announcements.

Mumare: proposing/creating new shapes (play-with-clay workshop?)

The 4 rivers of paradise - the cultivated garden and the wild

A new “botanical garden” of wild edible plants.

Reviving the path of the lost river through sounds of water flowing.

Sound “bombs”.

Group water Qigong in public space.

Commoning_Lab: Ideas Put into Practice

Below are a few examples of the ways in which we put the above approaches, methods, and ideas into practice during the course of the lab, as we enquired into the themes brought forward by the group. These examples represent only a snippet of our explorations together during the two weeks of our lab.

Example 1: Public Walk – A Guided Walk from the Bola Spring and Catchment Area to Naples’ Seafront

This walk, guided by local experts, was held on the first day of the Preennale gathering, and on the holy day of San Giovanni, an important regional, religious festival that combines Christian and earlier, pagan spiritual practices. This introduced Preennale participants to the local water landscape and context, while also bringing the group together as we voyaged through it. Common Views made use of this journey to collect both water from an important spring at Bola, some kilometres outside of Naples's urban area, and wild flowers and herbs, harvested by participants along the way. Which we planned to use for an initiation ritual of the Commoning_Lab on the following day, based on a local San Giovanni tradition.

Example 2: Ritual – Full Moon Water Blessings

Arriving at the seashore of Naples, we joined a larger group celebrating San Giovanni at the beach. Inspired by a local San Giovanni tradition, in which wild flowers and herbs are left in a bowl of water overnight to absorb the light of the full moon, with the auspicious water then being used to perform blessings on the following day, we invited participants to place the flowers and herbs that they had collected along the way from Bola into a jar containing the water we had collected from the spring there. While doing so, participants were asked to bring to mind an intention relating to water and to their wishes for themselves, the wider community and the World.

Commoning_Lab participant Gianluigi Maria Masucci on the value of rituals for Commoning:

"On the Ritual, today.

It's time to reawaken the relationship with ritual, with its gestures, with the elements and materials that are part of our historical memory, to reinterpret them and bring out new meaning. Materials in a living, organic relationship with contemporary time. And I feel it is precisely a cultural and social instance that we feel the need for: returning to the ritual to draw from the common origin the energies necessary to activate an authentic contact with oneself, with those values that favor healthy nourishment not only for the single individual, but for a community understood as a complex, living and interdependent organism. Dialogue together through the non-verbal, crossing the elements and the changes in state that derive from them, returning to visual contact, to the physicality of thought, materialized and interpreted action, concrete trace of hopes, desires, common energies."

Example 3: Object of Mediation – The Mummarrela

Objects of Mediations serve as a way to facilitate a conversation and to ensure horizontality and inclusion, promoting a listening attitude that is grounded in physical presence. Our initial research into local histories and culture led us to adopt the Mummarella – a small water vessel traditionally used by locals for the carrying and drinking of water from Napoli’s many sources and springs – as our chosen Object of Mediation. We connected with a local pottery artist who has been researching the nearby water culture and recreating the vessels. We received from her a small Mummarella for this purpose. On the day following our walk from Bola to the sea we used the water we collected at the spring, and which we had left out overnight, to soak up the light of the full moon – permeated with the scent of the wild flowers and herbs and the previous nights’ intentions and wishes – to bless our lab participants at the start of our first group discussion. We then poured some of this water into the Mummarella, which, when filled with water from our San Giovanni excursion and intention-setting and blessing rituals, served as a tactile and material representation of our wish to connect to the place, its landscape, to its culture and stories, and our intention to remain present and grounded as we engaged in our conversation.

Example 4: Embodiment practices

The philosophy and actions of Common Views are grounded in our belief—shared by others—that the current environmental crises stem from our growing disconnection from nature. But how can people feel part of nature if they don’t feel the nature within themselves? Once we understand that nature is an inseparable part of who we are, we become far more inclined to protect it. With this in mind, the Commoning_Lab included a variety of embodiment practices—such as group play and movement exercises—all centered around water as a sensory experience, which preceded our verbal conversations and sought to ground these in physicality and in an embodied understanding of water.

// The WILD EDIBLES foraging garden

This small intervention, created by Izmir-based artist Ali Kemal Ertem in collaboration with Naples-based researcher Simona Dapozzo, aimed to raise awareness about local, drought-resistant urban foraging. To achieve this, a small, under-utilised green space in front of Naples’ historical Porta Capuana was reimagined as an informal extension of the city’s official botanical garden. By doing so, the project sought to highlight the potential of this modest site as a valuable urban study area—an experimental resource for all who encountered it, showcasing the resilience and ecological benefits of native plant species. Nearby, the dry basin of the Fontana del Formiello stood as a stark visual reminder of the ecological crisis facing the world today.

The intervention underscored the importance of drought-resistant indigenous flora in sustainable landscape planning for livable cities. This focus was especially relevant given growing concerns about water management, as climate stress and increasing water shortages lead many city authorities to de-prioritise the needs of parks and public water amenities. Through this project, we hoped to contribute to a process of healing—inviting a reimagining of our cities that respects and works in harmony with the land, water, flora, and fauna around us.

// “E arrivata l’acqua” public space sound performance

One of the key themes explored during the Commoning_Lab was the concept of the urban skin—the relationship between the underground and the overground—and the need to make water more visible and present in Naples' public spaces. Participants reflected on the absence of the sound of flowing water in the city, a sensory element that was once common in the past.

As part of this discussion, ideas emerged around using public performances to trace the path of Naples’ lost underground water aqueducts through sound. One such performance, È arrivata l’Acqua (“The Water Has Arrived”), was carried out in collaboration with young participants from the cultural association Dedalus, under the guidance of Fatima Ouazri, sound artist Emil Cottino, and David Behar Perahia.

The performance involved a procession along Via Carbonara, ending at Porta Capuana, with a pause in front of the dry Fontana del Formiello—a symbolic site marking the presence of the city's historical underground water system. Using a cargo bike equipped with a sound system, the performers created an auditory experience of flowing water, while also inviting public interaction. Passersby were encouraged to write reflections directly onto the panels of the cargo bike, engaging with the theme of water and its significance. These public writings reflected the multicultural character of Naples, with contributions appearing in a range of different languages.

Video documentation can be found here: https://vimeo.com/1069096738?share=copy#t=0

The Manual of Commoning & Group Exhibition

As part of the Commoning_Lab’s work, and as an outcome of our process together, in addition to a series of actions and interventions in Naples’ public space as well as a group exhibition, our lab participants produced a Manual of Commoning in which we harvested the lab’s many inquiries, discussions, practices, actions and insights. The Manual was exhibited together with other works created during our lab, at the lab’s closing group exhibition, held at LAN, together with documentation of our actions, discussions and research.

The Manual, as a collection and documentation of our lab’s research and actions, is intended as a useful and expandable toolkit that can be used in the creation of a future biennale, as well as any other such alternative, Commoning-based gatherings and projects. The rough, unfinished yet complete, collectively curated quality of the Manual and group exhibition resulted in a beautiful, collective artwork that was in many ways much more successful, impactful, and engaging than a centrally curated project could have produced. Especially as contributions offered by lab participants came together almost magically into a complete, cohesive whole. The Manual presents a process-based, work-in-progress approach that is uniquely suited for collaborative, Commoning processes, which leaves it open for continuous contributions, for continued unpacking, reflecting, and constant re-examining, as projects, groups, contexts, and communities evolve and transform.