The Weight of the Sky
2026
Video with sound
15 minutes 7 seconds

The Weight of the Sky looks up and into Giambattista Tiepolo’s frescoes at Palazzo Archinto – depictions of the heavens populated by mythological figures, destroyed by Allied bombings in 1943. In a poetic inversion, the heavenly ceilings were lost to the sky above them. The video drifts between a photographic archive in Milan, through a scanner, and into a 3D rendering – a twofold memory encapsulating the human capacity for creation and destruction. The image expands through a mythological lens – the thermal imagery – which illuminates potential connections between myth, past and present: notably between Phaeton, scorching the earth with the sun, and an airstrike. Through this gaze, we see Apollo’s horses and Andromeda walking towards her sacrifice.
Guided by the voice of Italo Calvino, the work reflects on a 1981 interview concerning the future – an exchange that would later lead to his posthumous Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Asked about the essentials of tomorrow, he responds simply: 'Learn poetry by heart – lots of poetry by heart.’