Knowledge and understanding of the impact of our presence and actions in a territory are key to bringing about necessary change, linked to an awareness highlighting the need to safeguard our planet's botanical heritage and preserve biodiversity through simple actions: first and foremost, do not destroy!

 

In 2022, I started a research project entitled TRACCE A MONTESPLUGA (Traces in Montespluga) to describe a mountain location on the border between Italy and Switzerland, at an altitude of 1,908 metres. A frontier territory and at the same time a magnificent landscape and watershed between the Western and Eastern Alps, Montespluga is characterised by a large dam built in the early 1900s, together with conduits and dams that follow one another in the valley to feed the hydroelectric power stations.

The project is divided into two main axes. The first develops an aesthetic and formal research, with the creation of medium-format analogue photographs and the reinterpretation of materials collected from inhabitants, tourists and passers-by in Montespluga. The second axis I present here is a shared action, which took the form of a series of workshops over three summers and opportunities for discussion with the public. The aim is to raise awareness of the environmental change in Montespluga and of our responsibility as human beings in the complex system and ecosystem. Learning to see the mountains in a different way, refocusing attention on changes in flora, learning to name plants, shrubs and flowers giving them their importance, and
learning to read the landscape in its entirety. The profound change in the relationship between humans and the land that has taken place over the last fifty years is clearly contributing to changes.

No school education highlights these aspects, and even the residents of these valleys today lack the environmental and botanical culture that was present in the past. In a location, made available by the Municipality of Madesimo, it has been possible to initiate a process of reflection and learning, which deserves much more support and widespread dissemination.
To develop this project, I invited Saul Caligari, gardener, scholar, great lover of the land and expert in mountain flora, who led the workshops and worked with me since the beginning on this complex project and still helps me to structure the reflections and insights we have gathered over the past three years. Barbara Bonnefoy, professor of environmental psychology at the University of Paris- Nanterre and researcher at the Paris Social Psychology Laboratory is my second valuable contributor to the project. Professor Bonnefoy came to Montespluga, collaborated on the creation of the questionnaire we developed to stimulate debate and gather information on the topics described here. She made a research focusing mainly on the human being – natural environment relationship as well as the changes in the populations and use of this mountain area.

Both my artistic research and the action of “awakening awareness” oppose the established dualism between humanity and nature that still dominates Western thinking today.