Twice Upon a Time is a contemplative cinematic journey filmed in Venice, Italy on 10 May 2025, the very day that visionary curator Koyo Kouoh unexpectedly passed away at age 57, just months before she was due to unveil her program as Artistic Director of the 61st Venice Biennale. Her death on that day is central to the film’s unfolding and emotional core — the work is dedicated to her memory and incorporates her own words as guiding reflections on life, death, and parallel realities beyond the visible.
The film opens at dawn overlooking Venice’s cemetery island of San Michele, a liminal space between worlds. From this spectral vantage point, the narrative unfolds as a meditation on doubling and undoubling — a theme that has animated Marcos Lutyens’s practice from the Reflection Room at Documenta 13 to his film Twinnapse featuring acrobatic twins in an office space and the Simons Foundation Triangle Project centered around the theme of symmetry. Through a sequence of Venice’s evocative sites, the story follows a pair of twins whose mirrored presence guides the viewer between lived experience, porous timeframes and their reflection.
Their path culminates at the enigmatic Maddalena Church, its façade marked by an Eye of Providence — a portal-like symbol resonant of both pagan cosmologies and Christian mystery, suggesting a threshold to another world or way of being.
The film also honors the serendipitous artistic encounter between Lutyens and Kouoh: Lutyens first met her at her invitation (also with Samuel Leuenberger) to participate in the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale with his project Phobophobia. This earlier collaboration — curated by Kouoh and co-salonier Samuel Leuenberger — explored the psychology of fear and resilience. Marcos Lutyens
Across Twice Upon a Time, Venice becomes both subject and mirror: a city of water, reflection, and thresholds, where mourning surfaces as a field of inquiry and where Kouoh’s reflections on life, ancestry, and parallel existence reverberate through the twins’ unfolding odyssey.
Credits (as in the film)
Dedicated to the memory of Koyo Kouoh — Filmed on 10 May 2025 — As the light shifted.
The Twins: Aurora and Arianna Bisetto Curated by: Chiara Ianeselli Videography & Editing: Kinonauts StudioSound Composition: SITES / Mariela Gutiérrez Voices: Koyo Kouoh abd Marcos Lutyens
Additional Acknowledgments: Foundation Valmont Special thanks to Didier Guillon & Valentina Secco
© 2025 Marcos Lutyens. Filmed in Venice, Italy.