The first chapter of The Third Shore — the platform’s Founding Edition, convened in Venice during the Film Festival, in partnership with Foundation Oasis, and hosted at Casa dei Tre Oci by Berggruen Institute Europe.
The founding edition was deliberately intimate. It was not a market with booths, but a working session — a closely curated group across international cinema, cultural institutions, contemporary art, scientific research, cultural foundations, journalism, art fairs, and international business and investment, placed where the usual professional boundaries mattered less.
Over the course of the day, a single principle held: ideas should not remain abstract. The programme moved from an interdisciplinary conversation, into an artistic intervention, an evening reception and an intimate Founding Dinner — letting questions become material, enter space and become conversation.
The result was less a conventional programme than an encounter between different ways of knowing — and an early demonstration of the kind of space the platform intends to create.
Arriving at Casa dei Tre Oci in the morning light of the Giudecca, the day began not with a speech but with a walk. The house — today the European seat of the Berggruen Institute, presented as The House of Ideas — holds exhibitions, seminars, philosophy and science on a single floor.
Before the panel, guests moved through Joseph Kosuth’s exhibition The Exchange Value of Language Has Fallen to Zero. A text by Michel Foucault, on convenientia — the things that draw near and compose a chain — runs along the wooden beams: “The world is linked together like a chain.” In One and Three Mirrors, a mirror, its photograph and the dictionary definition sit together as object, representation and concept, while neon takes Foucault as material and the ceiling becomes a page to write on.
Here The Third Shore presented itself to the public for the first time — as a foundation and international cultural platform, during the days of the Venice Film Festival. Its co-founders, Bowen Sun and Jane Yao, arrived from cinema, from China, by way of years spent elsewhere.
“We are tired of talking only about bridges. It is about creating the basis for true collaborations — across disciplines like science, art and cinema, and across West, East, Middle East, Australia, practically every continent. We are here to create a better space in which to communicate.”
At eleven, the hall changes function
The chairs — woven in orange, pink, blue, yellow, green and purple — arrange themselves into a joyful chessboard before the great window. On the tables, glass water bottles and filtration systems; a little further on, filled tramezzini, tiramisù and the Venetian toast with pink sauce and shrimp. The panel is about to begin.
Presented in partnership with Foundation Oasis. A conversation that approached “rooting” not simply as a question of place, but as a question of knowledge, belonging, material and human agency — bringing academic and scientific perspectives into contact with artistic practice and cinema.
The panel opened from a question: what if the most radical thing to do is to literally root? Rooting as a radical gesture — and a serious debate about who decides what counts as knowledge.
Programme is indicative and hosted under Chatham House-style discretion. Times are local (CEST).
A founding conversation developed with Foundation Oasis, bringing cinema, artistic practice, academic research and scientific perspectives into dialogue.
Held at Casa dei Tre Oci, with a view across the Giudecca canal toward the Zattere — deliberately unstructured time for first conversations.
An artistic and spatial intervention allowing ideas from the morning to take physical form within Casa dei Tre Oci.
An evening reception bringing together guests from cinema, art, science, cultural institutions, media and international networks.
An intimate closing dinner shaped around Hua Yong’s commissioned table installation, transforming the table into a shared cultural space.
On the Giudecca, facing the Zattere across the canal: a 1913 Venetian house of three eye-like windows, now the European seat of the Berggruen Institute.
The venue is graciously hosted by Berggruen Institute Europe, whose programme has turned Casa dei Tre Oci into a house of ideas and a gathering place for global dialogue — an apt home for a platform whose entire purpose is to make different worlds speak to each other.
Commissioned by The Third Shore and composed in the room on the day, artist and designer Hua Yong turned the dinner table into a shared cultural space — the platform’s first commissioned artwork, and a concrete realisation of the “third shore” imagined by founders Bowen Sun and Jane Yao.
At the centre of the setting sits The Eye of Wisdom, built from the two fundamental geometries of traditional Chinese cosmology: the circle and the square — the sky is round, the earth is square. Where they meet, an emptiness appears. Not an absence, but an active part of the work: the Chinese tension between full and empty. Straight and curved lines, order and transformation, presence and open space coexist within a single form.
The visual thread is the ancient Chinese art of paper cutting. Hua Yong keeps its graphic lightness and symbolic richness, but remakes the materiality through 3D printing — gaining rigidity, volume and a new tactile presence.
Fish cross the surface as symbols of prosperity and abundance; the many eggs evoke generational continuity and vitality.
U-shaped underplates turn an ancient vocabulary into a contemporary sign. The curved profile reads as an embrace; the letter U, for the artist, alludes to unlimited. Pomegranates, seeds and vines compose an image of abundance and growth.
Sculptural candelabra carry the Reservoir and Hot-pot motifs. The shared logic of the Chinese hot pot defines the whole setting: not separate seats, but a temporary community gathered around one centre. A menu by Cipriani extends the idea.
Hexagonal forms reference scientific thought and the day’s interdisciplinary dialogue. As evening falls, light passes through the pierced surfaces and casts moving patterns across the cloth and the room.
The Tang Ginger Flower fragrance by Shanghai Tang drifts through the room. A Talisman Pouch handed to guests gathers the evening’s forms and meanings into a portable fragment of the work.
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The founding edition is the first chapter. Write to us to stay close to what comes next — future editions, programmes, and new ways to take part.