The burden of humanity
By Opiemme

When the pandemic brought the world to a halt in 2020, an awareness of the ongoing climate catastrophe seemed to emerge for a short time, perhaps born of the fear of being punished by nature. The sense of guilt for that ‘delirium over which one attempts to draw a veil of dissimulation’ (Zanzotto, 2009), as described by of one of the greatest Italian poets of the second half of the 20th century1, soon came to an end when the period of confinement dissolved into a memory without recall. The great purpose for the environment was soon forgotten. The nuances of a forgotten trauma. The great race started again, driven by that ‘feverish and unstoppable spirit,’ that ‘globalist fundamentalism’, (which), ‘with its single-mindedness, sets in motion a machine that crushes and annihilates everything’***. Without reflection. During that confinement, we watched as animals reclaimed territories emptied of humans, and a question lodged itself in our minds: How much do we limit the freedom of other beings? How much does our freedom of movement constrain the lives of other beings? Our weight on the world. Human gravity. An incontrovertible force at certain times and places. Man disposes of nature with a presumption of omnipotence, while she lightly takes back parts of the world used and changed by humanity, emphasising how infinitesimal our impact is on her timeline. Nature is in revolt, like ‘Camus’s man’; it sets a limit to an era of limitlessness technological human dominance.
We need new, unexpected sensitive questions to evolve.
It was this realization that prompted us to invite other artists to reflect on the relationship between man and nature, following a precise dynamic: each artist was asked to focus on a specific question, present it and mediate through their work. Not to provide answers, but to create new perspectives and provoke doubts in the audience

*** (Andrea Zanzotto, Marzio Breda, ‘In questo progresso scorsoio’, Garzanti, 2009)

 

 

‘Human Gravity’ shows:

From 23rd Novembre 2024 to 1st Marzo 2025,
at Marignana Arte, Venezia, gallery with:
Arthur Duff, fuse*, Aldo Grazzi, Yojiro Imasaka, Silvia Infranco, Alessandra Maio, Opiemme, Quayola

From the 7th June till 2nd November 2025, (extended until January 2026)
at MAGASIN CLD1, Via Baltea 7, Torino (by appointments only or on open days)
with Nicola Alessandrini, Defe, Alessandra Maio, Clara Lurueña Miguel (Es), Giulio Malinverni e Silvia Infranco.
Open days: 7-8 June, 4 – 8 pm

 

 

 

Human nature or natural man?
By Sabina Spada

“Human beings and nature. We are used to thinking of ourselves as independent creatures acting against the background – once green and bright, now increasingly grey and dull – of a planet that is home to us and provides us with indispensable resources. On one side, humans; on the other, nature, which we can exploit, plunder, respect, protect. The worldview, built on this dichotomy and the consequent idea of a nature separate from us humans, is entirely Western. It has its roots in the opposition between physis and logos elaborated by the philosophies of ancient Greece, an opposition reinforced by Enlightenment scientific naturalism and carried down to our day, shaping our way of knowing and inhabiting the planet. Man forms societies, organises himself through conventions and rules, and elaborates cultures – all in opposition to natural phenomena, to the laws of ‘this great book that is continually open before our eyes’, in the words of Galileo Galilei. Nature becomes the place outside our technologically advanced communities, a distant and faded memory, lingering in the background of our biology. Anthropology shows us that this view, based on the opposition between man and nature, is the child of the West and is by no means shared by all the inhabitants of the planet: each culture produces its own representation of nature.”

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Why do we consider ourselves outside of nature
when, in fact, we are entwined in a web
of interconnections with every other form of existence,
both organic and inorganic?

 

 

 

Are we not nature?

There are therefore many natures, that is, many different ways of interpreting the relationship between humans and the other organic or inorganic beings that share our habitat. The populations of certain areas of the Earth, such as the Amazon or Polynesia, illustrates this well. The French anthropologist Philippe Descola highlights this in his enlightening work Beyond Nature and Culture (2005), which invites us to rethink our relationship with the environment in terms of an ecology of relationships. Animals, stones, rocks, clouds, oceans, forests, savannahs, rivers… Perceiving all this as ‘other than us’ is both the origin and the result of a utilitarian vision of ‘nature’, which allows its exploitation and destruction. Rethinking our existence in the world in terms of a network of relationships with the other creatures- both organic and inorganic- means, on the other hand, breaking free from the nature/culture dichotomy, which is potentially harmful to our very survival. Animals, stones, rocks, clouds, oceans, forests, savannas, rivers are with us and are connected to us. The Achuar of the Amazon and the Kanak of New Caledonia teach us this: we are bound by a network of relationships that we cannot do without, even if we often ignore them. We are profoundly interdependent, not only with each other but also with all that is non-human. Every second breath we take, in Milan as in Stockholm, brings oxygen by Pacific Ocean algae into our lungs.
Why do we consider ourselves outside of nature when, in fact, we are entwined in a web of interconnections with every other form of existence, both organic and inorganic? Are we not nature? The gaze of art, as well as anthropological thinking, opens up these questions.” (Sabina Spada)