Immigration, il giardino delle lucciole

Parco d’Arte Vivente Association

The films presented by our cultural association, Parco d'Arte Vivente, are a concise example of the fruitful union between the environmentalist movement and the artistic movement known as "bio-art." The video "The Culture of Hybridization" by filmmakers Dario Magnani and Andrea Fantino tells the story of the birth of PAV and features a chorus of expert voices summarizing its philosophy. The videos by Francesco Mariotti and Caretto & Spagna illustrate two exemplary experiences of this "art of the living" in their concrete implementation. What contribution, we ask, can art make to the resolution of a geopolitical crisis of the magnitude we are experiencing? The reserves of fossil fuels, which nature has given us "freely," are being depleted due to plunder by a highly energy-intensive society. The greenhouse effect is gradually approaching a point of no return. Social relations and democracy are becoming more rigid due to the pressure of unlimited economic growth. How can art impact the factors of crises of this magnitude? Oscar Wilde said: "Art is useless, therefore essential." This aphorism can mean for us that, in the face of environmental disaster, the "truth" of art corroborates the subjective aspect of the ineluctable dynamic of transformation. The imminent and necessary biopolitics needed to save human settlement on the planet can only pass through a phase of "reenchantment" with nature and the world. This is a task that art can certainly undertake, growing and spreading as a symbolic, experiential, and convivial practice. Art thus becomes the vehicle of a new, pluralistic and relativistic philosophy of life, of a reconceptualizing thought that deconstructs the ironclad antinomies of universalist anthropocentrism to instead construct development models based on rebalancing and redistribution. Bioart, more specifically, directs its transformative energy toward that crucial area of ​​acquired subjective power – the ability to manipulate the biological basis of life, with its modernist corollary of the will to power.

(Piero Gilardi, president of acPav)