2015-2016
In a time of deep cultural, economic and environmental crisis, I turned to agriculture, one of the earliest forms of culture, to unearth the fundamentals of ecological thinking, that follows the logic of life, and we can use to rethink the relationship between humans and the environment, starting from the earth/Earth. Thirty stopovers, including several foundations, associations and cultural projects that grew out of farms or develop ideas in harmony with the core principles of farming work; in some of these I dialogued with the work of other artists, such as at the Fondazione Baruchello, ex Agricola Cornelia and PAV in Turin (with a
project by Piero Gilardi) as well as the Pollinaria in Civitella Casanova (with a piece by Futurefarmers). And,
of course, I could not leave out Bolognano.
Ciò che è vivo – project is a quest between art and agriculture, which began in 2015 with a journey through Italy, Ciò che è vivo – culture tour, going to meet organic farmers with a travelling installation.
At a time of environmental, economic and cultural crisis, I turned to agriculture, organic agriculture, as one of the earliest forms of culture, to trace principles of ecology of thought, according to the logic of life (bios-logy). I travelled to reclaim a culture of the earth, linking the work of different farmers, collecting and sharing knowledge for the preservation of biodiversity and soil fertility, useful for understanding natural processes and how to interact with them. The work proposes an aesthetic-political-poetic discourse, relating art and agriculture.
The research was first developed at the MACRO in Rome, during the project Artisti in Residenza 2015, with an artist’s book, a performance, an installation and a soil chromatography workshop.
Ciò che è vivo – Le vie della canapa
Ciò che è vivo – Verso il sole. Per elevarsi da terra
Ciò che è vivo – cromatografie
Platformgreen – testo di Raffaele Quattrone written on the occasion of the exhibition Ciò che è vivo – culture tour at Dislocata, Vignola, 2016
In 2016, the culture tour had an additional stop in Maranola, during Seminaria Festival 2016.
A precedent for this work took place in 2013, a first journey with the wooden phrase from Sablons (FR) to Milan (IT), for the GAP – Global Art Programme residency.