Luca Danese was an architect and hydraulic engineer active in northeastern Italy in the first half of the 17th century. His career, while rooted in the peculiar geography of the Po River Delta, interacted with and was shaped by the broader hydropolitics of the papal government that was busy transforming Rome’s water infrastructure. Further, it was the period when, with the Peace of Westphalia, territory became the central apparatus of political power both in Europe and in the colonies. Reading the unique corpus of Danese’s drawings that are held in the CCA against current debates on (post)colonial spatiality and fluid ecologies, Bagnato proposes a critique of the techno-political notion that flowing water ought to be brought under control.

Andrea Bagnato has been researching architecture, epidemics, and political ecology under the long-term project Terra Infecta. Among its outcomes are a forthcoming monograph by Mack, as well as lectures and essays. Together with Ivan Lopez Munuera, he curated the public conference Vulnerable Beings at MAAT, Lisbon (2021) and the collective exhibition Criaturas Vulnerables at La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2022). Bagnato is co-author of the book A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change (Columbia/ZKM, 2019), and has worked as a book editor for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Forensic Architecture, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. He teaches at WdKA in Rotterdam.