Can we move from one world to another, from one period of human history to another, and still create forms, produce meaning, sell art, as if nothing had happened? To slip into a new era without taking it into account? Between the countdown of the ecological catastrophe and the new environmental conscience, we are in the process of changing paradigm, and of entering, without always knowing it, often backwards, in an unknown universe, where the political, social, scientific, artistic questions are no longer posed in the same terms. Where was the man ("ecce homo") is imposed today the interdependence of the forms of life ("to like the echo?"). Where Prometheus was unleashed, with his myth of progress and his dogma of development, a new concern arises, still badly understood, that of lasting, of letting live, of abstaining. Where substance reigns, that of products, resources, certainties, a new question now insinuates itself: the atmosphere, a matter of ambiance and resonance, of airy spirits and the bewitchment of things. And where anthropocentrism triumphed for a long time, as an imperial posture, the ground is cracking under the feet of Man, who loses his capital letter, his arrogance, his solitude too. Of this obliged ecological turn of the late modernity, the art and the culture cannot not take account. They must find a new tone, in tune with the perils, the urgencies, but also the humility and the breadth of vision required by these new times. They must explore new themes, which frenetic capitalism and the dramas of history had relegated to the background. Above all, they need to think together things that have been separated for centuries: objects and lives, air and meaning, micro and macro, time and space. It is these vast problems that the symposium will address. It is in this spirit that it will shake up our habits. It is with as much joy as questioning, with freedom as with open dialogue, that it will tackle head on the revolution in progress, and its crucial stakes for the art world - and for the simple fact of creating. We will talk about the Anthropocene, green finance, vital decay, militant slush, the relationship between the environment and the extremities, and many other things. Keeping in mind, in order not to disarm, that it is not a question of defending nature, but rather, today more than ever, of being the nature that defends itself.
1/2
MA FINE ARTS
by Alessandra Ghiazza
In the empty spaces I find pieces of dreams fields and water, of the forgotten green. A stratification of memories that leads to reveal experiences in natural landscapes, real but also places suspended between memory and the dreamlike, creating through geometric and repetitive shapes a space of contemplation on places, to find them again; postcards of a fragile and continuously changing landscape.
MA FINE ARTS
by Axel Mattart
Tired of Fighting Against Your Brain ?
MA FINE ARTS
by Camila Polania
Some say the body arrives first, and the soul takes longer. This installation begins with that delay, in the tension between presence and absence. Instructions of Rematriation is a video installation projected onto a wind-moved fabric, a surface that never fully settles. In front, white Rimax chairs evoke everyday spaces of waiting across Latin America: porches, patios, sidewalks. The work follows the passing of a single day, tracing the slow return to the body after displacement. Through video, writing, textile, and sound, the installation holds a kind of return, not geopolitical, but personal and ancestral: a political and spiritual reconnection with what was once left behind.
MA FINE ARTS
by Giorgio Cassano
ZONA DI SACRIFICIO is a film study that fuses documentary, ethnography, and poetic montage around the Fiume Tara—Taranto’s revered “miracle river.” Through a tapestry of memories, legends, visions, and personal testimonies, the film explores how this sacred source has sustained local identity and resilience, even as the encroachment of the ILVA steelworks has turned the surrounding landscape into a literal “sacrifice zone.” It is both a visual elegy to a once-pure watercourse and a poignant reflection on environmental violence, tracing the uneasy coexistence of spiritual reverence and industrial devastation in a community striving to reclaim its voice.
MA FINE ARTS
by Ludovico Orombelli
Sinopia is the culmination of a research project carried out at ECAL on the techniques and images that have shaped the Western imaginary. A scene from The "Legend of the True Cross", painted in the 15th century, has been reproduced using the same materials that its author, Piero della Francesca, employed to sketch the preparatory drawing on the wall before completing it in paint. The image thus reappears in its earliest phase, as a ghostly presence that invites us to reflect on the presence and role of the past within our present time.