Zeppelin Swarm includes a massive campaign to publicise a zeppelin fair that never really occurred and it spans from the participation of Venetian street artists to the implantation of viral media on the Internet.
The event/fiction will be supported in different ways.
The design of a virtual zeppelin for use in all media imagery (all zeppelins portrayed will be the same colour and size). The production of a series of photomontages, combining the image of the virtual zeppelin with classic photographs of the Venice cityscape. The photomontages will serve as source material for all publicity images. A real zeppelin remains fixed, or ‘stuck’, in a thin corridor between two buildings within the Arsenale exposition space of the Venice Biennal. The zeppelin is a replica of a real aircraft, complete with control cabinet (gondola). It will remain in place for the duration of the exhibition. Using videos shot in Venice, a video-montage will be created to simulate the zeppelin invasion. The aesthetic and quality of the video will imitate amateur videos shot on a handheld camera or cell phone. The video will be uploaded to various websites by a specialized team, with the aim of circulating the both the video and the photographic imagery on the Internet.
The publicity campaign will be developed through different products: posters to be hung throughout the city a few days before the inauguration of the Venice Biennale; postcards and souvenirs to be distributed solely by souvenir venders within the city; street artists in Venice to be invited to make paintings depicting the zeppelin invasion; an advertisement in the Italian press based on the aesthetic of other media materials and images from the photomontages; an anonymous strategy of press diffusion to infiltrate the mainstream media with fictive information about the zeppelins.