Being Ecosystem 2060

In May 2022, Bianca ran a second one-week workshop at Fondazione Pistoletto, this time in collaboration with Flora Mammana and Matteo Pra Mio. Also this time we worked with a group of young experts in the Biellese area to explore the present and future of Biella tourism, the Zegna Oasis and the wider territory.
 

For 8 days the group came into contact and in conversation with various actors on the field: a hiking guide, the managers of a mountain refuge, an educator, artist* of the territory, a start-up and digital expert, other human inhabitants e non-human of the territory. The workshop resulted in a publication, an exhibition and a series of short videos.
 

 

Being Ecosystem 2060
 
How will we live the mountain in 2060? How will we reconcile the world of humans with the world of other living beings? To explore these questions for a week we trained to observe, identify ourselves, hybridize ourselves with the prospects of a variety of local inhabitants, both human and non -human (such as, for example, trees, birds, rodents, insects, streams). This process has brought us to a critical reading of how most of us live the mountain today: a playground, fast tourism, with little empathy towards other points of view, desires and non-human needs.

We therefore worked to imagine a world in which humans do not prevail in the ecosystems in which they live, but in which both permanent and temporary inhabitants participate in their care. In the future, we will finally be able not to see the mountains as a set of resources, but to hear it as a community made of different beings – plants, animals, waters, bacteria, mushrooms – that inhabit different spaces and times, strictly connected and interdependent. We therefore imagine a future in which even humans, through common identification and hybridization activities, will have learned to participate in a regenerating way in the ecosystem.

We asked ourselves about how to expand the interconnection between humans and the rest of nature. We believe that the multiple ways pass through learning non-human languages ​​involving all our senses, through empathy, respect and experimentation with different points of view.

Young experts from Biella: Elisa Francini, Giulia Gronda, Francesca Palma, Martina Panetta, Martina Seimandi, Angie Trombin.

Artists: Camila Aguais, Francesco Pavignano, Dafne Salis, Stefano Volpato.

Mentors: Bianca Elzenbaumer, Flora Mammana and Matteo Pra Mio / Forno Vagabondo.

We thank Andy Abbott, Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna for the invitation to run the workshop. We thank Clara Tosetti and Annalisa Zegna for the amazing support throughout the week.