THINK-LANDSCAPE
Text by Maria Chiara Wang
If our problem is the fate of the earth, it is from the land that we must leave. And my idea is simple: thinking and practicing landscapes to make ecological resistance [Matteo Meschiari] 1 RESIDUI#5 comes out at the end of an absurd and disastrous year, a year that has found all of us defenceless in the face of an unstoppable situation. This fifth issue acquires, therefore, a particular meaning not only within Livio Ninni’s personal path, but also on a collective level, differing from the previous four photozines by theme and development. The aim is no longer to document the work of other artists, but to develop his own research, which is enriched by a new repertoire of installations made in abandoned urban places and in peripheral areas in a state of decay. These are factories, offices and churches, that is those environments where human existence is expressed. Bringing nature back within what remains of human activity becomes an act of resilience, as well as an exercise in ecological resistance: thus the economic-social system and the environmental system converge towards a new synthesis. The landscape that is created breaks the canonical cultural schemes, breaks that subdivision of space into rigid categories according to its function, utility and the different level of productivity as theorized by Gilles Clément2 . It defines before our eyes the image of a spatial utopia that creates an interference in the flattened, homologated and dried-up human imagination. The real is rethought through a poetic language whose syntax is made up of white branches and red threads; the former represent the strength, as well as - in their whiteness - the purity and the neutrality, of the natural element that manages not to be overwhelmed by human activity and that remains connected to the residual material structures through red veins, symbol of a new vital flow. The graphic signs, or rather those minimal lines that in Ninni’s photographs echo the architectural profiles, in the installation interventions are transformed from a gesture to a natural element: the branch becomes the reification of the pictorial intervention, the trace of the artist’s passage, the trait that highlights the mutation of the place over time. In addition to the usual photographs transferred onto various media and to the installations, to complete the multidisciplinary language of the artist, there are also Polaroids, which represent visual notes for the development and for the creation of subsequent works; snapshots resulting from that wild attitude of thinking-landscape able to give shape to the idea and to the imagination.
1 Matteo Meschiari, Geoanarchia. Appunti di resistenza ecologica, Armillaria (2017) 2 Gilles Clément, Manifesto del Terzo paesaggio, Quodlibet (2004)
“Lo spazio urbano è un contenitore composto da elementi antropici. Il continuo sviluppo dell’antropizzazione (ovvero dell’intervento dell’uomo sull’ambiente naturale allo scopo di adattarlo ai suoi interessi) porta ad un crescente numero di elementi in decadenza e in degrado soggetti ad incuria ed abusivismo. Queste caratteristiche sono alla base del progetto “RESIDUI” che ho trattato negli ultimi due anni. La radice “RES” della parola residui viene mantenuta per proseguire il progetto concentrandomi sulla “RESILIENZA”. Questo percorso nasce come evoluzione della ricerca fin qui portata avanti e vuole porre la sua attenzione su questi componenti residuali e sulla loro trasformazione temporale dovuta a cambiamenti causati dall’uomo o dalla natura. L’elemento naturale “spontaneo” all’interno dello spazio urbano è il soggetto principale del progetto. È l’elemento resiliente, che è riuscito a mantenere in parte o totalmente la sua integrità fisica o, se scomparso, a pervenire la rigenerazione.” Livio Ninni
“The urban space is a container made of anthropic elements. The ongoing development of anthropization (namely man’s intervention on the natural environment in order to adapt it to his interests) leads to a growing number of elements, in decay and in decline, that are subject to negligence and illegal development. These features are at the basis of the “RESIDUI” project that I have been dealing with in the last two years. The root “RES” of the word residuals is kept to continue the project focusing on “RESILIENCE”. This path was born as an evolution of the research carried out so far and aims to focus its attention on these residual components and on their transformation over time due to changes caused by man or nature. The “spontaneous” natural element within the urban space is the main subject of the project. It’s the resilient element which has managed to maintain part or all of its physical integrity or, if it has disappeared, to achieve regeneration.” Livio Ninni
