Amy Balkin, Invisible 5 (The Grapevine, Buttonwillow, 2006, self-guided critical audio tour along Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Nikola Uzunovski, My Sunshine, 2009, Production room picture.

Christiane Löhr, from left, Kleine Kuppel, 2008, grass stalks, 12 x 10 x 10 cm, Kuppel, 2008, grass stalks, 15 x 21 x 21 cm, Flache Kuppel, 2008, gambi d’erba / grass stalks, 4 x 11 x 8 cm, Courtesy Galleria Salvatore + Caroline Ala, Milano.

Carlotta Ruggieri, Detail from Senza titolo, 2009 – “I was aware of the hard workings of the natural world beyond the periphery of ordinary attention, where passions lose their meaning and history is in another dimension.” (Edward Wilson), 2009, 3 panels, lambda print on dibond, 80 x 177 cm, 80 x 160 cm, 80 x 120 cm, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Michele Dantini, The World Bank, 2009, Photo slide show, newspapers, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Michele Dantini, The World Bank, 2009, Photo slide show, newspapers, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Dacia Manto, Inlandsis 09, 2009, Drawing on printed page, Sketch for the installation at CCCS, Florence, Courtesy the artist.

Michele Dantini, The World Bank, 2009, Photo slide show, newspapers, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Superflex, Biogas Unit – Tanzania, 1997, Application sample, Courtesy the artists, Photo credit: Superflex.

Nicola Toffolini, Stralcio da taccuino progettuale: Volumi mutevoli a regime di crescita disturbato, 2009, Drawing with Pigma 0.05 and 0.1 black pens on Moleskine Japanese Album, 14,8 x 18 cm, Courtesy the artist.

Futurefarmers, Victory Gardens, 2009+, Mixed media installation, ephmeral objects from participatory project, Courtesy Amy Franceschini and Gallery 16, San Francisco.

Nikola Uzunovski, My Sunshine, 2009, rendering project, Courtesy the artist.

Ettore Favini, La verde utopia, 2009, Video DVD, 26’ 59’’ with conversation between Ettore Favoni, Gilles Clément, Alessandra Sandolini, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Dave Hullfish Bailey, From the center of some language left at the edge of the end of the frontier (kit for a conference table; first version), 2009, Project for site-specific installation, Courtesy the artist, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Julian Rosefeldt, Requiem, s.d., 4 channel film installation, Super 16 mm transferred onto DVD 16:9, loop 12’5’’, Courtesy the artist; Max Wigram Galery, London.

Alterazioni Video, Incompiuto Siciliano – Intervallo, 2007, video, dv pal, 3'36'', Courtesy the artists.

Alterazioni Video, Incompiuto Siciliano – Intervallo, 2007, video, dv pal, 3'36'', Courtesy the artists.

Andrea Caretto & Raffaella Spagna, Human Microbiome (studio), 2009, Drawing on paper, Courtesy the artists, Produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze.

Amy Balkin, San Fernando Valley, Map: NASA World Wind.

Henrik Hakansson, MARCH.16, 2008 (Pharomachurus mocinno), 2008, Amplifier, 63,2 x 63,8 x 26,7 cm, Courtesy Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada; Galleria Franco Noero, Torino.

Dacia Manto, Inlandsis 09, 2009, Drawing on printed page, Sketch for the installation at CCCS, Florence, Courtesy the artist.

Nicola Toffolini, Ciclico ambiente polifonico per piante claustrofobiche, 2003, Plexiglas display case, CD player, speakers, fluorescent lamp, fan, timer, soil, expanded clay, rock wool, water, plants, 35 x 165 x 35 cm, Courtesy Lipanjepuntin artecontemporanea, Trieste/Roma.

Superflex, Biogas Unit – Zanzibar, 2008, Application sample, Courtesy the artists, Photo credit: Superflex.

Tue Greenfort, Medusa, 2007, Murano glass, 431,8 x 264,16 x 127 cm, Private Collection, Courtesy Johann König Gallery, Berlin.

Lucy + Jorge Orta, OrtaWater – Exodus, 2007, Wood, diverse textiles, steel, laminated Lamda photograph, 3 Royal Limoges porcelain hearts, 2 liferings , 2 oars, 3 water flasks, 8 OrtaWater bottles, glass, 150 x 150 x 60 cm, Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin, Photo credit: Ela Bialkowska.

Katie Holten, Excavated Tree (Flowering Dogwood), 2007, Newspaper, cardboard, paper, steel, wire, PVC, duct tape, approx. 5 x 4,5 x 4,5 m, Installation view at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2007, Photo Credit: Mike Schuh.

Centre for Contemporary Culture
Strozzina (CCCS)
Piazza Strozzi
+39 055 2645155
Firenze
Green Platform.
Art Ecology Sustainability
24 April-19 July 2009

Green Platform. Art Ecology Sustainability, curated by Valentina Gensini and Lorenzo Giusti, the exhibition presents a series of works by international artists who address these issues in a number of very different ways.

Green Platform takes a complex critical view designed to examine at stake in an interdisciplinary fashion the issue of the environment in the dual sense of a crisis in our thermo-industrial society based on non-renewable sources of energy and of an ecological crisis caused by pollution and by the worrying overheating of our planet. The problem of ecology cannot be confined merely to an environmental approach, it needs to be analyzed and understood in its myriad philosophical, psychological, environmental, economic and social implications. Thus ecology is no longer defined solely as a natural science but as a science of interrelations, confines and cross-border osmosis, the focal link in the partnership between nature and culture.

Not only conceived as an exhibition but as a working composite platform, Green Platform is based on the attempt of offering various kinds of active experience: workshops with artists and other players in the environmental associations and NGOs, a series of lectures with experts in various relevant disciplines and the screening of videos and documentaries on environment-related issues. The exhibition’s catalogue with entries by international authors from a variety of different backgrounds and cultures (from economy to architecture, from social sciences to public art) sets up a perfect tool for reflecting about a new idea of art and about its possible, new and “sustainable” development.

The artists whose work will be on display are Alterazioni Video, Amy Balkin, Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna, Michele Dantini, Ettore Favini, Futurefarmers, Tue Greenfort, Henrik Håkansson, Katie Holten, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Christiane Löhr, Dacia Manto, Lucy and Jorge Orta, Julian Rosefeldt, Carlotta Ruggieri, Superflex, Nicola Toffolini and Nikola Uzunowski. Between them they will address the issue of the environment in the dual sense of a crisis in our thermo-industrial society based on non-renewable sources of energy and of an ecological crisis caused by pollution and by the worrying overheating of our planet.

Green Platform allows visitors to compare the artists’ different approaches to, and ways of reflecting on, the problem of ecology which will be explored not only in terms of an environmental approach but also analysed and understood through its myriad philosophical, psychological, environmental, economic and social implications.

Art, Nature, Landscape
Some of the artists focus on investigating and denouncing existing situations, conduct and social practices that fail to respect the ecosystem. Their work highlights the inconsistency and responsibility of individuals and of society as a whole, yet without claiming to indicate any "right way" to resolve the problem of the environment. Rather, their work offers a detached analytical view that questions tangible elements in the difficult transformation process currently underway.

Art and Sustainability
Other artists dwell on the theme of virtuous practices designed to curtail environmental impact, in an attempt to avoid jeopardising the chance of future generations to continue to develop while safeguarding the quality and quantity of the world’s natural reserves and heritage. These artists’ works are formed with natural, perishable and recycled materials or are constructed in accordance with energy-related, behavioural and structural rationales based on sustainability.

Eco-Activism – Eco-Criticism
Finally there are artists who resort to programmed or relational practices, interacting with the public sphere and proposing not just a virtuous approach in their artistic output but also fully-fledged alternative strategies for development. ‘Eco-active’ artists make the best possible use of the varied vocabulary of art to fight a concrete environmental battle. Their work simultaneously covers the ground of both artistic practice and political activism.

Alterazioni Video (Italia, 2004)
Incompiuto Siciliano is a project in progress that aims to identify and classify the aesthetic and formal characteristics of unfinished public architecture in Italy. The survey, carried out by Alterazioni Video together with Enrico Sgarbi and Claudia D’Aita, has so far resulted in the classification of around 500 unfinished architectural projects. The Italian region with the highest number of unfinished public works is Sicily and for this reason the style identified by the researchers, widespread in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s, was dubbed “Unfinished Sicilian”. The intention of the project was not merely to expose the phenomenon, but also to promote dynamic acceptance of it in order to trigger virtuous response mechanisms.

The capital of the “Unfinished Sicilian” style is Giarre, a town of 30,000 people in the province of Catania, where a relatively small area is home to 12 unfinished architectural projects, including an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a cultural centre, a flower market, a track for model cars, a civic theatre and a polo ground. In this area Alterazioni Video and the town council have built the first “Unfinished Park”, which will also house a foundation with the purpose of observing the phenomenon of unfinished architecture. The Park is the result of an operation designed to historicise the area, whose identity is strongly conditioned by the presence of unfinished public works.

For Green Platform, Alterazioni Video realized a workshop with students of the University of Florence. Within the context of the institutional cooperation between the CCCS, directed by Franziska Nori, and the Laboratorio Crossing coordinated by Professor Giacomo Pirazzoli (from the Planning Department at the Faculty of Architecture, Florence University), the aim of the workshop was to implement the project “Incompiuto Siciliano” [“Unfinished in Sicily”] involving the architectural declination of buildings in the park in the city of Giarre. Specific sustainability criteria were adopted in the planning phase providing for minimal impact on the existing buildings in the park and for respect for the unfinished architecture’s basic stylistic features. The work on the buildings went hand in hand with research into the identification of potential cycle lanes for use by visitors to the park. The laboratory was attended by: Alessio Galasso, Aura Gnerucci, Luca Mannucci, Leonardo Martini, Dania Marzo, Iacopo Mascelloni, Eric Medri, Bianca Maria Rulli, Michela Saddi, Iolanda Bianchi and Carla Petrelli.

Amy Balkin (USA, 1967)
Amy Balkin’s art projects investigate the relationships between man and the environment, understood as physical and social space. The artist uses many different strategies to tackle interconnected themes, such as public law, access to primary resources, territorial usage, pollution and speculation. Balkin practises an authentic form of artistic activism aimed at identifying alternative scenarios of growth and cohabitation.
 
In 2001 Balkin purchased a parcel of land near Tehachapi, California, as a project entitled This is the Public Domain and tried to transform it by law into an international public property. In 2004, she commenced the “construction” of an aerial public park with variable area and location, through the purchase of credits for carbon dioxide emissions, in the Public Smog project. She thus questioned the system of selling concessions as a remedy to the climate crisis and more in general the monetisation and expropriation of air.

Developed in conjunction with artists Kim Stringfellow and Tim Halbur, together with the Pond: Art, Activism, and Ideas and Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice organisations, the Invisible-5 project examines the social, economic and environmental context of the San Joaquin Valley, in California, along whose length runs Interstate 5 connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles This corridor is not only a strategic axis for the transport of goods and people, but also for the development of livestock farming and intensive agriculture, the cheese industry, waste disposal, oil and gas industries and the construction industry. Due to this concentration of activities, the area of Interstate 5 is one of the most toxic on Earth. Invisible-5 tells the story of the people and the local communities and their struggle to achieve environmental justice. The project takes the form of a sound archive, shared over the Internet, which gathers the testimonies of the inhabitants along with typical local sounds and music.

Andrea Caretto / Raffaella Spagna (Italy, 1970/1967)
Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna probe the deep relationships between man and the natural environment. They use the tools of the natural sciences and anthropology to analyse the connections between man, living organisms and the environment, developing projects, performances, relational practices and installations enriched by their respective backgrounds: landscape architecture for Raffaella and natural sciences for Andrea.

The development of the previous projects Esculenta, Food Island and Sativa-Cerealia originated with an introspective movement that investigates relationships with the environment.
 
In Sativa the story of an area (Val di Susa) afflicted by serious environmental and social problems was recounted using cereals. The profound existing relations between cereals and man (natural, symbolic, social, sustentative, etc.) and the relationship between wild and domesticated was translated into highly significant experiential passages with a deep meaning, such as the study cultivation of fields of barley and durum wheat; the extraction and consumption of the juice obtained from them, which is highly nutritious and purifies the blood; and the processing of the green fibre waste from the extraction for the sculptural creation of a "landscape of memory".

Human Microbiome, a new work produced by CCCS for Green Platform, takes the form of a monolithic cabinet with drawers and openings, in which the visitor can "view" various types of materials and documents on the corporeal microcosm, known in scientific circles as the “human microbiome”. The data presented is translated into images, drawings, videos, dioramas and sculptural objects, all processed for the purpose of a cognitive and creative representation of the "otherness" constituted by the micro-organisms that inhabit it.

The intimate symbiotic relationships with bacteria — between the human macrocosm and the bacteriological microcosm that inhabits it — become a metaphor for the more extensive and indispensable relations between man and the ecosystem in which he exists. Caretto and Spagna invite us to reflect on the quest for true sustainability in terms of "profound ecology”. Radical revision of the anthropocentric point of view is required, along with the acquisition of awareness of the complexity of the world that surrounds us in order to feel ourselves finally part of a larger system, which we cannot disregard and to which we belong like all other living species, plants, bacteria and animals alike.

Michele Dantini (Italy, 1966)
Located somewhere between an anthropological/cultural survey and investigative journalism, Michele Dantini’s work is characterised by an ethnographic sensitivity akin to Félix Guattari’s conception of ecology with its triple subjective, environmental and social dimension. Knowledge occurs through an individual process, in which personal consciousness and memory are confronted with the local culture and collective memory.
 
The work entitled The World Bank is dedicated to the story of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, which commenced in 2001 with the allocation of 4.2 billion dollars by the World Bank. The management of the project is controlled by a consortium formed by the World Bank with ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and Petronas of Malaysia. The construction site, commenced despite the objections and resistance of international NGOs and local communities, has had an enormous environmental impact, cutting through the primary forest of south-eastern Cameroon for over 1000 kilometres. The consortium attempted to contain the problems by forcing the governments of Chad and Cameroon to sign a strict guarantee protocol destining oil revenue for health, education and agriculture.

It soon became clear that the World Bank’s declared intentions of inserting poor and marginalised communities in the global consumption system were not serious. The pipeline commenced operation in autumn 2003. Less than five years later a statement from the World Bank announced that it was ceasing to support the project because Chad’s government had repeatedly violated the terms of the agreement by using oil revenue to purchase arms and recruit French troops.

Michele Dantini’s project, which commenced in winter 2001/02 with a trip to Cameroon, was progressively expanded with research and data from both official sources (the World Bank and Chevron-Exxon Chad) and NGOs monitoring the construction of the pipeline and its social and economic impact. This work takes the form of photographs taken •in situ• and a free newspaper entirely dedicated to the episode and its developments.

In retrospect, Dantini considers his project a sort of “test” that verifies the skills and socio-environmental responsibility of the managers of the largest Western financial institution, the ideologists of a single model of “development” that has all too often shown itself to be inadequate, unsustainable and even harmful.

Ettore Favini (Italy, 1974)
Memory, time, the landscape and man’s relationship with the environment are the central themes of Ettore Favini's work. His early pieces obsessively question themselves about subjective memory and the Proustian relationship that it establishes with objects, and probe the concept of time and the perception of self.
 
In 2006, Favini’s Verdecratoda won the Artegiovane Award. The project involved a district on the outskirts of Turin that was once a farming community and was subsequently transformed into a working-class satellite of the FIAT factory. Verdecuratoda focused on the historical memory of the district by planting roundabouts and urban settings with old local fruit trees, thus connecting the location’s past with an ecological and sustainable present.

In 2007, whilst working at The Italian Academy in New York, Favini's work combined the idea of time with the notion of landscape. The endangered gardens of the Lower East Side, threatened daily by property speculation, became the focus of an awareness operation. Favini offered visitors a bench to contemplate the gardens, awakening awareness of the precious but ephemeral community gardens.

La verde utopia, produced by CCCS for Platform, is a video interview of Gilles Clément, author of Manifesto of the Third Landscape and The Planetary Garden, by Ettore Favini and Alessandra Sandrolini. Alongside, the portraits of the great founders of contemporary ecological thought pay him tribute.

The interview proceeds by analysing the concepts of “third landscape,” referring to residual areas colonised by spontaneous vegetation, and “planetary garden,” or the world seen as an enclosed place – a garden in the true etymological sense of the term – within the biosphere. From the critical analysis of Darwinian thought to the appeal for social and political commitment to serve as gardeners in the cultivation of the planetary garden, Clément's "realist utopia" vindicates a fundamental awareness for contemporary man. A new political project is required, capable of accepting the idea of partial de-growth in economic terms to develop new growth of intangible values, attentive to biodiversity as a global and transversal principle — a value that is currently misunderstood and constantly threatened.

Futurefarmers (USA, 1995)
Founded in 1995 by Californian artist and designer Amy Franceschini, the Futurefarmers collective focuses its attention on the environmental effects of globalisation. Futurefarmers is an updated form of cultural activism aimed at the creation of interdisciplinary platforms, through both public art projects and the exploitation of the interactive potential offered by the new media.
 
Victory Gardens is a project developed in conjunction with the city authorities of San Francisco and the Garden for the Environment association. The title refers to the agricultural project set up by the US government during the Second World War to deal with the food shortages caused by the conflict. The programme involved the temporary conversion of private gardens and urban parks into cultivated fields. The ensuing yields covered 41 percent of consumption. Inspired by the historical model of the Victory Gardens, the Futurefarmers project provides participating citizens with a kit to grow vegetables and the necessary assistance to take their first steps in farming. The programme also features the use of “gardeners” for the establishment of a civic seed bank to preserve biodiversity. The main aim of the project is to promote alternative forms of urban agriculture based on reducing the production chain and using eco-compatible practices.

Other Futurefarmers works are concentrated on the production of objects realisable in the future, in the attempt to identify new lines of development for sustainable design. Completed works include a seaweed-fuelled garden bio-reactor to produce hydrogen; a solar-powered jukebox; a “botanical Gameboy”, which uses electricity produced by lemon trees; a sundial clock; a kit for analysing the energy potential of seaweed; and a system for harvesting and circulating rainwater for domestic use.

Tue Greenfort (Denmark, 1973)
Tue Greenfort’s work investigates the cultural and economic dynamics that condition the relationship between man and the environment. Overtly anti-ideological, his works appear as anti-rhetorical models of criticism, which are reworked each time on the basis of the specific characteristics of the context in which the artist is operating.
 
At the 2007 Sharjah Biennial Greenfort raised the temperature of the exhibition rooms of the Sharjah Art Museum by two degrees, reducing the work of the air-conditioning. Using the money derived from the energy savings, the artist purchased a portion of rainforest in Ecuador. Again in 2007, at the Sculpture Project Münster, Greenfort used a tanker lorry to clean the surface water of a severely polluted reservoir by spraying it with a chemical substance capable of conveying the pollutants to the bed. The artist’s intention was to highlight the uselessness of certain environmental policies, aimed at fighting the consequences of pollution rather than the causes.

Due to the rise in temperature caused by climate change, water pollution and lack of natural enemies like turtles and tuna, whose numbers have been decimated by overfishing, the mauve stinger (Pelagia noctiluca), a jellyfish with a very painful sting, has found ideal breeding conditions in the Mediterranean, where constantly growing populations are forming. Tue Greenfort’s work, produced by CCCS for Green Platform, proposes several glass models of the pink jellyfish made by a small artisanal glassworks on the Venetian island of Murano. The artist thus hopes to bring to public attention the problem of the loss of biodiversity, which is fundamental for maintaining the equilibrium of the ecosystem. The battle against the proliferation of the mauve stinger, once sought and studied by natural history museums, constitutes the umpteenth attempt by man to combat the consequences of his bad behaviour without attacking the root of the problem.

Henrik Håkansson (Sweden, 1968)
Henrik Håkansson’s projects are the result of his interdisciplinary naturalistic approach and combine cross-cutting biological, anthropological and aesthetic interests. The attentive observation of the natural rhythms of life and the study of plants and animals form the scientific basis for wider reflection — conducted by recording and presenting fragments of natural cycles — on the possible forms of relation between man and nature.
 
In 2008, the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City staged an important solo exhibition dedicated to Håkansson’s work, following the artist’s stay in the Mexican reserve of Montes Azules, in the Selva Lacandona area. Among the works created during this period (Chronicles), Selva Lacandona presented 100 images taken from a series of films made using 12 video surveillance cameras positioned in the southern part of the forest. While the wish to study natural processes continues to constitute the focus of the project, this work is imbued with different meanings due to the endangered status of the Selva, whose area is gradually shrinking as a result of human activities. Indeed, in this case the behaviour of the animals becomes the study of a struggle for survival against the progressive reduction of living space. The audio works presented at the Museo Tamayo include MARCH.16,2008 (Pharomachurus mocinno), also featured in Green Platform, which reproduces the song of the quetzal, the most famous Central American bird, venerated by the Maya and the Aztecs with the name Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent. Still considered the “king” of birds, the quetzal is now an endangered species. In Håkansson’s work the song of the quetzal is reproduced by an amplifier, a Fender Reverb 65, which is itself considered a legend and defined, on the rock scene, as the “king” of its kind. The work thus takes the form of a sculpture/sanctuary, a tribute to the living legend of the quetzal, whose song will soon probably be heard only by artificial means.

Katie Holten (Ireland, 1975)
Irish artist Katie Holten is engaged in the development of a highly diverse array of projects, from relational art to low-tech objects, but all of her work is characterised by her personal involvement and commitment, and she actively monitors each stage in its production.
 
In the workshop of the San Pasquale school, a project presented at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Holten presented a public platform in which local artists, designers, writers, actors, musicians, scientists and architects were able to express themselves and compare their work. The principle behind these practices is expressed in terms of “art as a state of encounter” in Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. The audience is invited to sit down and spend time in the workshop, watching the videos projected and taking the papers created by the artist. The concept of “gift,” capable of freeing the market economy simply and directly, is extremely important for Holten, who often makes magazines, booklets or pamphlets to give to the public.

The generally ephemeral installation coincides with a nomadic type of artistic practice and lifestyle. In response to this approach, Holten, known as the “Weed Lady,” often gathers wild plants that she casually finds in her path — in New York as in Venice — and replants them, or makes a private, possibly portable, garden.

The uprooted tree that dominates the great hall of the CCCS, made for •Green Platform• by the artist herself during a week’s stay in Florence, is a very powerful symbol, capable of combining delicacy and brutality. Its surface, made from paper and cardboard covered with shiny black adhesive tape, contrasts strongly with the natural appearance of the forms, denouncing their contrivance. The tree, the very symbol of nature, thus assumes a deadly meaning, making us reflect on the delicate and fragile condition of the natural ecosystems. The indoor installation, purposely compressed by the ceiling, with the roots floating on the floor instead of buried, is a visual condemnation of the global environmental crisis.

Dave Hullfish Bailey (USA, 1963)
California artist Dave Hullfish Bailey analyses given structures and their dismantling and reassembly, “performing the repurposing.” Inspired by Bateson’s principles of the ecology of the mind, his works investigate models of social organisation and their possible subversion.

His works, exhibited throughout Europe and at the Lyon Biennial in 2007, are being presented in Italy for the first time. He generally works with multiple media, using drawing, photography, objets trouvés and installations. The rather playful appearance of his installations conceals a profound sense of instability, virtually a metaphor of the precarious balance of civil society, which is founded on superstructures that can be completely overturned in crisis situations.
 
The work shown here, created specifically for Green Platform, originates from an interesting parallel that the artist established among three dimensions: the circular structure of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, also maintained in passages from the text written by this iconic representative of Land Art; the Slab City Library, a deteriorated district where California motorhome owners seeking peace and quiet built a simple hut as a place to exchange books, which Hullfish Bailey interprets as the representative model of the structuring and transmission of knowledge within a community; the installation environment, physical yet ectopic because it pertains to a design medium that lies outside social infrastructures. Interlacing these different levels, Hullfish Bailey places an installation — composed of sawhorses and planks of recycled wood, i.e. everything needed for a library reading room — in the exhibition space, surrounded by 15 photographs that “cite” the library walls from every angle. The planks, retrieved from previous CCCS exhibition set-ups, bear parts of sentences from Smithson’s text, which the artist has modified. The dismantling and reuse plan is thus a dual one: objectual and verbal, i.e. materials and text alike. And it is achieved by modifying the structure of aggregate data, which are revitalised and restreamlined.To experience this work, the observer ritually follows the circular path indicated by Smithson in his text, the path already taken by the artist to photograph the library and now renewed by us as we forge a profound relationship with the work and its spatial, temporal and cultural references.

Christiane Löhr (Germany, 1965)
Christiane Löhr’s art is quintessentially ecological and eco-sustainable, for it uses strictly natural, and thus fully biodegradable, materials which are gathered according to a principle of proximity to places frequented by the artist. Her works do not contemplate any waste. However, this is not the most interesting aspect of the artist’s ecological conscience. Löhr bases the foundations of her work — drawings, sculptures and installations alike — on the frequentation and daily study of nature. The profound, almost symbiotic, belonging to the plant and animal world generates a simple and harmonious beauty that does not linger on a lyrical vision, but instead finds its basis in an analytical and cognitive approach. Löhr’s attentive observation, focused on the morphological development of living organisms, results in sculptural and structural forms that alter architectural modes with the phytogenetic intelligence that occurs in nature.

The installations featured in the exhibition, which take the form of horsehair knotted tubes that cross the rooms and a white base that sets off the delicate sculptures of plant stems, testify to the artist's daily contact with nature and her riding and walking, which offer her precious seasonal opportunities to select horsehair, branches, seeds, plants and delicate stems that she uses to construct her sculptures.

The contrast between the lightness of the latter and the architectural coherence of their structure, is explained in the mediation between the analytic observation of botanical/zoological development and the study of architecture inspired by nature, whether Christian (particularly Gothic), Islamic or Hindu.

As the drawings follow development and growth according to the biological rules of plants (from bottom up, from inside out), Löhr’s botanical constructions base their equilibrium on the comprehension of the plant structure in relation to the abstract geometry of polyhedrons. Their spatial distribution creates a sort of mental landscape in which the calibrated distances establish harmonious relations.

Dacia Manto (Italy, 1973)
Dacia Manto’s work transfers her observation of nature and the landscape onto a level of formal research, using a dual approach combining science (via the re-elaboration of technical data) and the senses. Manto’s installations are thus the product of the union of the objective analysis of reality and the intimate reworking of it, in an attempt to achieve deep understanding of the elements that compose it.

Gilles Clément’s theories on the “planetary garden” and the “third landscape”, which have inspired many works conceived as a totalising natural experience, have played a particularly important role in the development of Manto’s thought. The Fluviale installation is an exemplary case. It is made from various kinds of seeds, which the artist scattered on the banks of the River Arno once the life of the project was over. As in the case of other installations, the drawings also prefigure free development in physical space unconditioned by nature, for the lines are assimilated by the vegetation and vice versa.

The project drawn up for Green Platform appears as a sort of update of the work entitled Inlandis, made in 2005. Built using several sheets of eco-plastic, derived from maize, at a distance of four years from the first work, this piece reproduces the area of the South Pole, which is gradually shrinking due to global warming. Antarctica is home to 90 percent of the world’s ice mass. However, the mass is progressively dwindling year by year and the effects can easily be measured on the entire glacial sea. It has been estimated that over 13,000 square kilometres of marine ice have been lost over the past 50 years. Internally, the huge shelf currently loses between 90 and 150 square kilometres of ice each year. Much of this melting has occurred at the far northern tip of the Ronne Ice Shelf, one of the most important defence lines of western Antarctica. Three of the main ice shelves, present on both sides of the peninsula, have already disintegrated: Wordie, Larsen A and Larsen B. In February 2008, the Wilkins Ice Shelf also collapsed. Manto has thus used this work to focus our attention on an enormous problem, inviting us to consider the geography of the South Pole as a living organism, whose protection is vital for the future of the entire world.

Lucy + Jorge Orta (Great Britain, 1966 / Argentina, 1957)•
Founded on a political conception of art, Lucy + Jorge Orta’s research adopts alternative strategies to condemn, raise awareness and take action in the attempt to promote and set in motion new cognitive and relational processes. The artists’ works range from installations to videos and performances and remind us that imagination, the ability to focus on alternative images of the future, is the first tool required for the creation of new models of development and cohabitation.

Among the themes tackled by the artists in the past few years, great prominence has been given to the problem of the impoverishment of water resources – caused by global warming and the pollution of natural reservoirs – and the risk that certain populations of the world will lack the right to access sources of drinking water. These problems are probed by the Orta Water cycle, which includes the work Orta Water – Mobile intervention unit exhibited in Green Platform. The work takes the form of a rudimental emergency means for the supply, transport and distribution of drinking water. Along with its purely symbolic value, the work reveals a complex array of meaningful elements aimed at raising awareness of a global problem. Our choices, our concept of progress and collaboration between different people, all play a fundamental role in the solution to this problem.

The most recent works of Lucy + Jorge Orta include the Antarctica series that recounts the project of the two artists to found — with the help of the local scientific community — a temporary village in one of the most hostile places on Earth, which has now become the focus of interest of many countries because it is home to the largest reserves of fresh water in the world. Located in an area that is not subject to national jurisdiction and fully protected as an environmental and scientific reserve by an international convention, the Antarctic Village is presented as a model of alternative development, not available for exploitation by man or privatisation, that hopes to inspire future policies.

Julian Rosefeldt (Germany, 1965)
Julian Rosefeldt makes films distinguished by great theatricality and cinematographic narration. His works appear as complex mise en scènes aimed at emphasising the contradictions of human behaviour through the contrast between the deliberate absurdity of the situations portrayed and the apathy of the ensuing events.

An architect by training, Rosefeldt is best known for several multi-channel video installations, and for three works in particular — Stunned Man, The Soundmaker, and The Perfectionist— that make up the Trilogy of Failure, produced between 2004 and 2006, in which the artist investigated several everyday activities of "urbanised" man, highlighting the grotesque and exaggerated aspects.

Requiem, the work selected for Green Platform, is a video installation made in 2007. It is composed of four panels, arranged in a square to form a spatial setting, onto which four films made in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest are synchronously projected. Brazilian Amazonia is home to the largest area of primary forest in the world: 370 million hectares, constituting a third of the entire global total. Today this area is seriously threatened by logging multinationals. The work suggests we reflect on the state of health of the forest and on the foolishness of certain human behaviour. Immersed in an extraordinary context, whose richness is conveyed by the hum of insects, birdsong and the sound of raindrops falling from the trees, the viewer is invited to participate in a sublime and absolute experience. However, the rapture provoked by the sight of this magnificent landscape is interrupted by the falling of a tree, which produces a striking sound: a deafening, yet perversely attractive, thunder, which engages the viewer in a sensorial experience with great emotional impact. The falling of the first tree is followed by other, equally traumatic, ones. The existential yet symbolic nature of the event is amplified by the absence of human figures in the scene. The falling of the tree thus takes on a universal value, presenting itself as a reflection on death and the precariousness of life, beyond the mere condemnation of human behaviour.

Carlotta Ruggieri (Italy, 1967)
Nature is the focus of all Carlotta Ruggieri's work, which modifies the cognitive modes and operating customs of the natural environment and seasonal cycles. The creation of a work strictly follows the light and times of the seasons, developing through extended periods of observation.

Suspended between staticness and dynamism, Ruggieri’s images always establish a singular relationship between the viewer and the natural environment, subjectivity and otherness, investigating this complex dimension through the serial repetition of images.

The artist has recently recommenced work on the theme of the “third landscape”, already tackled in the Senza titolo series of photographs — a spontaneous wood that looks like a forest although it is actually situated on the edge of an urban area. The presence of non-indigenous plants that have become naturalised in the region testifies to the interesting phenomenon of migration of flora, which is the focus of the artist’s current research.

The new series displayed here, produced by CCCS for Green Platform, presents the inside of industrial fixtures of a former city factory, now enveloped by spontaneous vegetation. The complex relationship between man and nature, the artificial and the natural environment, translates into an image the contrast between rough iron frames and the climbing plants captured against the light.

This synthesis forcefully introduces the theme of Gilles Clément’s “third landscape” and extensively and profoundly comprises the concepts of liminality and diversity.
The fragments of landscape that escape farm machinery, weeds growing among the asphalt and abandoned bushes along the motorways form the so-called "third landscape", which is a precious reserve of biodiversity. This wealth is not merely due to the variety and spontaneous growth of the plants, but represents the optimum possible level of life in a specific environment. The “third landscape” thus has a profound value, for it is constituted by species that find sanctuary solely in places that are not controlled by power, expressing political and philosophical needs.

Superflex (Denmark, 1993)
The Danish collective Superflex, founded in 1993 by Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Fenger and Rasmus Nielsen, creates projects that encourage virtuous practices and global environmental and ethically sustainable awareness.Their approach has two aspects: it aims to provoke with strategies and actions that can be reintroduced in different situations by various subjects, and it strives to defend artistic practice as an operating tool outside the traditional museum-gallery-collector system.

In 1996/97 Superflex worked together with Danish and African engineers to create a simple and inexpensive portable biogas unit capable of generating sufficient energy for the lighting and cooking gas needs of an African family. Biogas, conceived for use in small-scale economies, is produced using organic materials, such as dung. The dung of two or three cows will produce four cubic metres of gas per day, which is sufficient to cook the meals and light the home of a family of eight to ten people. The use of this source of energy is not only totally eco-friendly and sustainable, but also avoids the use of alternatives such as wood burning, which is widely used in Africa with devastating consequences on the environment.

The project, devised in Tanzania and presented at Documenta X in Kassel in 1998 as a model of a certain approach to ecological artistic practices, continues to be used in many developing countries, such as the recent example of Zanzibar, illustrated here in a series of photographs.

The Biogas Unit seems to satisfy very simply and directly the basic principles of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives), which invites researchers all over the world to design systems of industrial and energy production based on the principle of the elimination of waste and refuse. Taking a lesson from nature, in which the concept of "waste" is unknown, we can use any kind of waste to constitute a source of energy for the production of new materials or "green" energy.

Nicola Toffolini (Italy, 1975)
Nicola Toffolini makes sculptures and installations of varying dimensions combining artificial and technological materials with organic elements, generally conditioning their balances and growth rates. Toffolini’s art is a sort of visionary empiricism aimed at rethinking the forms of the world according to alternative models of sustainability and development. His installations act through both the semantic potential of their elements and the natural or artificial processes that link them, appearing as a third kind of reality, founded on scientific knowledge and parallel to criticism of it. On the basis of this contrast, the interpretation of Toffolini's work is always expressed and complicated by possible contradictions.
 
Toffolini also uses drawing as a means of expression. The artist’s notebooks meticulously record the stages of development of his installations, mixing analytic desire, naturalistic representation and artistic invention. With an approach more akin that of an engineer than an artist, Toffolini reveals the becoming of his thought, in the transition from idea to work, somehow imbuing the formality of scientific drawing with poeticism and visionariness.

For Green Platform the artist presents a new work, made from recycled materials combined with waste collected from industrial manufacturing processes. The piece consists of two cultivated cells, arranged parallel to each other, which are self-sufficient in terms of energy. The energy produced by the external artificial light shining on the case is recovered by a simple technical apparatus with a small solar panel and is converted into a beam of additional light that is conveyed directly onto the plant. The spectrum of light produced — blue in one showcase, red in the other – interferes with the development of the plants and has a different effect on their growth in the two separate environments.

Nikola Uzunovski
(Macedonia, 1979)
Nikola Uzunovski’s work focuses on the conceptual and experiential analysis of natural and perceptive phenomena, paying great attention to the relationship established between subjects and their environment.

This ecological sensibility is illustrated in A Change in the Air Changes Everything (2004), presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo for Greenwashing in 2008, which offers a synthetic illustration of the theory of the butterfly effect, whereby every little change in a system greatly conditions the system itself, leading to reflection on the great environmental themes and the fundamental role played by the beholder in a work of art.

Selected for the Macedonian pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, My Sunshine is a utopian but feasible project, unusually collocated between art and science, visionariness and social preoccupation, poetry and hyper-technology.

The Arctic Circle receives no sunlight during the winter due to the rotation of the Earth's axis. Uzunovski’s project involved the creation of a suspended structure that reflects the sunlight in the urban areas around the Arctic Circle. The work takes the form of a revolving reflecting disc, suspended from a transparent aerostatic balloon. The most important aspect of this research is the impact on the local population: enjoying the benefits of one or more artificial suns implies possible consequences not only on the level of experience and aesthetics, but also in terms of social interaction and psychophysical well-being. A scientific experiment, My Sunshine is also a public and relational work of art, which involved climatologists, meteorologists, astrophysicists, aviation engineers, architects and designers, all interested in the implementation of a collective utopia: bringing sunshine to Lapland at the height of winter.

Here Uzunovski presents his virtual mobile workshop, the utopian base for comparison on the artificial sun project. Everywhere My Sunshine has been presented he has sought opportunities to discuss the various aspects of the design illustrated here.

The students of ISIA of Florence, accompanied and led by Prof. Antonio Glessi, will participate in two workshops held by Uzunovski with the purpose of designing the revolving rings on which the reflecting mirror will be anchored.

The exhibition catalogue, with articles by international authors from a whole range of different disciplines and cultural backgrounds (from the economy to architecture, and from the social sciences to public-sector art), is a perfect tool for prompting reflection and debate on a new concept in art and on the opportunity to foster the new and ‘sustainable’ development of that art.