30 Million Years Under the Pavilion
Where the permanent meets the temporary in a tapestry of architectural storytelling
In 2025, the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale marks its 30th anniversary — a remarkable lifespan for a structure originally intended to be temporary. Beneath this now-permanent architecture, a hidden exhibition will be revealed only when the pavilion is dismantled, offering a quiet meditation on time, visibility, and the archaeology of architecture.
The fossilized remains of a mysterious hominid species, Nanogyna acephala — a small, headless, humanlike being were unearthed in Giardini in 1993. Far from a mere scientific curiosity, Nanogyna challenges accepted narratives of evolution, biology, and communication. With no head, yet rich in sensory and reproductive complexity, it reorients our understanding of where intelligence and life can reside.
Communicating through beeswax spheres and sound vibrations triggered by water, and reproducing via parthenogenesis, Nanogyna offers a symbolic figure for speculative evolution. Its uniquely adapted physiology appears to be shaped by the microclimate and biodiversity of Venice itself — a creature of the margins, born in the transitional space between natural and artificial ecosystems.
Like the pavilion that shelters it, Nanogyna lives in tension between permanence and impermanence, visibility and obscurity. This exhibition transforms the pavilion into an archaeological fiction, inviting visitors to step into a layered narrative — one that blends scientific imagination, evolutionary myth, and architectural memory.
Read Scientific publication about Nanogyna acephala.
CREDITS
Scientific Advisory:
Dr. Michael Ohl – Biologist, Natural History Museum of Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity; Associate Professor, Humboldt University of Berlin
Dr. Massimo Canevacci – Cultural Anthropologist, Professor, Sapienza University of Rome and University of São Paulo
Dr. Felix Tropf – Genetic Sociologist, Associate Professor, University College London (UCL) and Purdue University
Artistic Team:
Marco Canevacci
Eric Engelbracht
Kindly supported by:
Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani (DSZV)
Title: Little Toad, Little Toad: Unbuilding Pavilion
Venue: Korean Pavilion, Giardini, Venice
Dates: May 10 – November 23, 2025
Curators: CAC (Curating Architecture Collective: Chung Dahyoung, Kim Heejung, Jung Sungkyu)
Commissioner: Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
Participating Architects/Artists:
o Kim Hyunjong (ATELIER KHJ)
o Heechan Park (Studio Heech)
o Young Yena (Plastique Fantastique)
o Lee Dammy (Flora and Fauna)
Sea Art Festival 2025, Dadaepo Beach, Busan, South Korea
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
///
POLYMETER
Sea Art Festival 2025
Dadaepo Beach, Busan, South Korea
In POLYMETER, materials with different temporalities converge in one space.
The outer shell of the work is made from fossil-based polyurethane, while the inner membrane is hand-crafted using locally harvested kelp. This delicate core, sensitive to heat and humidity, may dissolve entirely, revealing the fragility of organic life beneath a synthetic skin.
The two membranes, like two temporalities, never fully align: one fossilised, the other decomposing. Their interplay symbolises the tension and co-existence between synthetic durability and biological impermanence, between fossil capitalism and environmental regeneration.
Positioned at the threshold between land and sea, the sculpture transforms the shoreline into a site of sensorial reflection. It invites a dissonant pause — between breath and rupture, resilience and collapse — where plastic and water intertwine, and the future remains uncertain. (Keumhwa Kim)
Artist
Yena Young & Marco Canevacci (Plastique Fantastique)
Curator
Keumhwa Kim, Bernard Vienat
Plastique Fantastique Team
Sebastian Podesta, Valeria Landete, Maria Eleonora Ledesmam, Sarah Müller and Eunsoo Ko
Video
Marco Canevacci, Yena Young, Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon), Lee TaeHoon
Special thanks
Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale Team and Mina Choi
POLYMETER
Inflatable site-specific installation
6m diameter, 4m height
TPU, kelp, poem
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
(und Scheidung)
LOVE, LAW and FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A participatory installation by Plastique Fantastique
August 2025, Rathausvorplatz Wedding, Berlin, Germany
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur MitteBerlin teaches us to love intensely and to let go quickly. The participatory installation Berlin Wedding (und Scheidung / and Divorce) invites visitors to make a temporary promise and playfully explores the dissonances between love and law, emotional bonds and official ties. Along large-scale, ephemeral art installations, strangers, friends, and lovers meet and are guided through a fast-track journey from first infatuation to pop-up weddings and express divorces. Passion meets paragraphs, bureaucracy turns into poetry, and separation becomes a creative rupture.
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
CREDITS
Concept and Artistic Direction: Plastique Fantastique / Yena Young and Marco Canevacci
Dramaturgy and Projection: Sarah Möller
Performers: Anna Athanasiou, Miguel Angel Collado Sanchez, Giuliana Corsi, Charline Lebailly, Michele Meloni, Virginnia Ogechi Krämer, Onur Özyurt
Plastique Fantastique Team: Valeria Landete, Maria Eleonora Ledesma, Sebastian Podesta, Carsten Reith, Markus Wüste
DJ: Valerie Renay, DJ Problems, DJ Ewigkeit
Production: Eric Engelbracht
Administration: Julius Kaftan
Photos: Konstantin von Sichart, Plastique Fantastique
Video Footage: Konstantin von Sichart, Plastique Fantastique
Drone Footage: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Video Editing: Konstantin von Sichart and Alice Dalgalarrondo
Berliner Wedding (und Scheidung) is a collaboration between the Department of Art, Culture and History of the Berlin Mitte District Office, visitBerlin and Plastique Fantastique.
The project is funded by the Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises of Berlin through grants for “Special Tourist Projects in the Districts”
© 2025
www.plastique-fantastique.de
Porous Festival, Villa Arson - Nice, France, June 2025
POLYMETER
POROUS FESTIVAL
Villa Arson - Nice, France
June 2025
A PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE PROJECT
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young
PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE TEAM
Sarah Möller
Lucas Sere Peltzer
Pihla Pellinen
Sebastian Podesta
Carsten Reith
PERFORMANCE
Yena Young
Valerie Renay
SOUND
Valerie Renay
Misha Maclaren
SPECIAL THANKS FOR ADVISING ON BIOMATERIALS
Valeria Solari
Jens Balko, Fraunhofer IAP
SUPPORTED BY
S+T+ARTS
GLUON
VITO
Zebrastraat
STROOM Festival
Villa Arson Nice
Arts Council Korea
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
POLYMETER:
POLYMETER is an immersive, inflatable installation composed of three concentric, air-filled membranes—each made from a distinct material reflecting a phase in our material and ecological evolution. The outer shell, crafted from fossil-based polyurethane, speaks to the synthetic permanence of the industrial era. The middle layer, a biodegradable plastic developed by the Fraunhofer Institute, signals a transitional, science-driven phase of innovation. The innermost layer, handmade from algae, is fragile, organic, and ephemeral. Inside, a soundscape of plastic-derived textures—crackles, hisses, and drones—plays in shifting loops, echoing the musical concept of polymeter: multiple tempos coexisting in asymmetry. POLYMETER invites a pause—an attunement to the entanglement of plastic and water, not as extractive resources, but as memory, atmosphere, and temporal matter.
Material:
TPU (thermoplastic polyurethanes), Bio PBSA (polybutylene succinate adipate) material processed by Fraunhofer IAP, 100% bio algae material handmade by Plastique Fantastique with the support of Valeria Solari.
Dimension:
6m diameter, 4m diameter, and 2m diameter spheres.
PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUEA journey through an ephemeral realm
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young
This extensive monograph, published by DCV, showcases for the first time a selection of projects from the past two decades. The catalogue features texts by Lidia Gasperoni, Mateo Feijóo, Daniel Felgendreher, and the authors.
In the wake of Frank Lloyd Wright’s pioneering work, visionary architects including Frei Otto and Buckminster Fuller established bubbles as a recognized artistic and architectonic form. The Berlin-based art duo Plastique Fantastique (Marco Canevacci and Yena Young) go one step further and harness them as a medium of temporary social interactions. The philosopher Vilém Flusser conceived of space in the digital universe as a network of relational settings in which humans can be in multiple places at one, as a “bubble that extends into the future.” Plastique Fantastique transform our urban and rural environments into laboratories for such spaces in which urgent social, political, and aesthetic questions are negotiated. Oversized translucent bubbles, traffic islands ringed by diaphanous tubes, giant lifebelts, air-filled sausages that the audience at a Peaches concert pass over their heads: Plastique Fantastique’s installations fuse art, performance, people, and architecture in a multisensory experience that blurs the conventional boundaries of art and focuses our attention on the larger bubble in which human existence is contained. Richly illustrated with exceptional photographs, this monograph is the first to document a representative selection from the duo’s projects of the past two decades.
DCV – Dr. Cantz'sche Verlagsgesellschaft, BERLIN
A special thanks to Martin Holz
www.dcv-books.com