"MEMORIALE"- The Olive Tree in the age of Technology

11-25 August 2024, multidisciplinary exhibition. Mesagne.

The bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Xfp), accidentally imported from Costa Rica to Puglia in 2013, has devastated over twenty million olive trees, about one-third of all the olive trees in the region.

This epidemic has caused enormous economic, landscape, and social damage, with citizens still engaged in the fight against the most severe phytosanitary disaster in the country.

This catastrophe is particularly shocking given the longevity of individual olive trees, with many living for several hundred years and some even for thousands. Examples include the "Giant of Borgagne" in Salento, or the "Patriarch of Nature" in Sardinia. Some of these ancient trees, with the same roots and trunks, have been present since the time of Aristotle, who mandated the death penalty in the Athenian constitution for uprooting an olive tree, a sacred gift from Athena.

It is difficult to imagine that a species of such significance could succumb to a bacterium, merely one of the countless bacteria coexisting with Earth's ecosystem for millions of years.
Therefore, it is more plausible to view the Xylella issue as part of the broader Anthropocene problem—a critical era in history where human activity has become the most influential force on nature.

Interference with the natural balance of the territory (cause of the problem: human);

Xylella Fastidiosa;

Abandonment of the Land (cause of the problem: human);

Excessive Use of Pesticides and Herbicides (cause of the problem: human);

Mismanagement of the Problem - anthropological and political determinants (cause of the problem: human);

"CONTAINERS"- Intensive Shipping on the Rhine River and its Influence on the Ecosystem.

12-14 July 2024, multidisciplinary project. HBK Essen, Culture Moves Europe, Goethe-Institut

Interviews, photographic documentation, audio and video footage constitute the same journey the artist took from the source of the river in the Alps to its mouth in the North Sea. A journey culminating in a sound installation where the viewer replaces himself with the Earth's life-and-death process, inside a box.

The artwork investigates the problem of the Anthropocene from the perspective of Europe's most important economic route, the Rhine River, by examining intensive inland trade and the concept of "Containment.

"On the river that connects Hong Kong to Frankfurt, 200,000 tons of goods pass through each minute, about 13 times the total mass of Mont Blanc each year, or 2 millennia of water from the Rhine River itself.

This incessant flow of goods on a global scale disrupts the natural balance of the earth system, which sees parts of its body being moved and consumed from one part of the globe to another. One example is the unintentional introduction of the bacterium that arrived from Costa Rica at the port of Rotterdam and is now destroying the ecosystem of Apulia, the artist's home region.

The "Rhein Vater" (father Rhine) has been since the time of the Roman Empire respected and revered in its social and cultural possibilities, as well as for its uncontrollable natural features. However, today it is made pure market tool to be "functioned" even in the increasingly frequent periods of drought and high water, as evidenced by the research funded to allow the same commercial flow despite the climate crisis.

The Container object is at this point maximal metaphor for nature as "standing reserve" [Bestand], a resource to be stored for later utility (Martin Heidegger, The Question concerning Technology - 1953) and for planet earth as "maternal provision", passive, feminine and un-intelligent space to be plundered and re- sourced, consumed and controlled (Zoë Sofia, Container Technologies - 2000).

"THE LAST SUPPER"- Modernity and the lagoon ecosystem.

05 May-05 July 2023, interactive installation. CNR-ISMAR, Palazzina Canonica, Venice.

The interactive installation "THE LAST SUPPER" from 2023, undertakes a thorough investigation into the interaction between art, technology, and the environment, drawing upon the philosophical principles of Martin Heidegger who sees technology not merely as a tool but as a way to unveil reality. This work represents the pinnacle of interdisciplinary research that combines art with science, particularly through collaboration with Dr. Fabio Trincardi, focusing on the Anthropocene and its ecological implications.

The viewer, holding the fridge door open, observes themselves live on a monitor. This component of the installation uses two internal cameras to create a visual loop that directly engages the viewer, confronting them with the reflection of their actions and symbolically, their environmental impact. The act of opening the discarded refrigerator exposes the deep connection between the environment and the world of technology.

The choice to use a refrigerator, an artificial extension of natural space that forces life to conform to the laws of technology, reflects on the dynamics of human obsolescence versus the durability of machines and on the transformation of nature into a reserve available for human consumption.

Inside the refrigerator, the audience is confronted with real fish from the Venice lagoon, preserved as if they were consumer goods, overlooking their sentient nature. Venice often experiences mass fish deaths, where mullets come to the surface dying due to lack of oxygen.

"#NONAMECODE"

18 July 2021, interactive performance. Save Biennale, Bastioni S. Giacomo, Brindisi.

In 2021 I staged the interactive performance #NONAMECODE. To quote Marshall McLuhan, the medium that becomes the message. In the work, there is not only the total inclusion of the viewer in the artistic process, but the viewer is personally brought to complete the work through the medium, in a kind of subordinate essential relationship, for the revelation of the work of art and the digital man.

Here, with the concept of medium, the artist refers to the simultaneous ability of the digital man to artificially branch out into an extracorporeal digital dimension, where there is no longer time or face, and on the other hand, to access it through a tool with more extensive capabilities than any other medium in the world, the smartphone.

The performance featured two professional actors moving among the audience in the surrounding space. The two had to move robotically, almost unable to recognize reality. They could have no interaction with the audience, and it was impossible to recognize them as they wore a balaclava.

Totally devoid of any physical features such as clothing or body-verbal language, the only way to interact with them was to scan the QR code tattooed by me on the nape of each one's neck. With this you were referred to their instagram profile where the two had previously published a post where they warned of their non-physical presence.

"@UNDERWATER"

22 June 2022, virtual experience. Academy of Fine Arts Venice.


spatial.io

Taking advantage of the period of confusion and tourism of the Venice Biennale 2022, I carried out among the calli and campi of the city an operation of fictional construction of a collective image, the survival of a fragile city.
The work presents thirty sound samples recorded in the most endangered areas of the island. I personally asked the island's citizens to simulate for a few seconds the death that soon awaits the Venetian lagoon, itself oblivious to the fragility of its territory.

The act of casually asking Venetian workers, shopkeepers and residents to leave me an audio recording of their voice as they simulate a drowning allowed me to build a virtual archive for a non-eternal city. Moreover, each audio track, in addition to being geo-located to the location where originally recorded, takes the opportunity of the emerging NFT market in 2022 to experiment with a new technology.

"FISH MARKET" - Our way of loving nature beyond the dinner table

February 2023, photos. Tronchetto (VE).

This photographic project features Nicholas Neglia Caropreso and Giacomo Genchi following overnight the processes that precede the sale of fish in one of Italy's largest fish unloading sites.