2014

Environmental intervention + photography
A4 sheets hanging at the entrance to the Bosco di Cardigliano.
Inkjet printing, with double folding frame (31 × 46 cm)

 

We could inspire to the case of chicken (…): in fact, if to transform the limestone into lime we need to heat it at 1500 degrees, a chicken produces an eggshell even more resistant at only 37 degrees. Oysters and spiders get even better results. The first ones produce a shell more resistant than special ceramics used for the missiles, at less than 4 degrees, while the latter produces a wire stronger than Kevlar used in bulletproof vests, which is produced with huge energy costs and with large amounts of toxic waste.

Serge Latouche, La scommessa della decrescita, 2007.

This work has been thought for the Bosco di Cardigliano (LE), a protected Mediterranean forest, also declared SCI (Site of Community Interest), in which the protection and conservation rules do not allow any kind of intervention that would affect its natural evolution.

In the woods, among the various faunal forms, they live some spiders that weave beautiful “cage-like” spiderwebs, which inevitably catch the attention of those visiting them.

From reflections on the energy sustainability of the current economic and production system, elaborated through the principles of the Theory of Degrowth of Serge Latouche, and the Bioeconomy of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, I suggest observing the natural world, and the spiderwebs, from an economic point of view, and to be inspired by it not only as the formal universe but also as a production system.

Embracing the thinking of economist Serge Latouche, a degrowth thought, I decided to minimize production and to intervene not in the environment but in the gaze on it. At the entrance to the forest, the audience was offered the opportunity to modify their gaze by reading a quote from Serge Latouche.

 

> Apulia Land Art Festival 2014, curated by Francesca Guerisoli, Bosco di Cardigliano, Specchia (LE).