BLOSSOMS AND FRUITS AT ONCE

Inspired by the Winogradsky column, a late 19^th century scientific experiment that recreates the first stages of bacterial life on earth, ‘Blossoms and fruits at once’ is a video installation that critically reflects on the human desire to go back to a primordial moment of existence, connecting local histories, geological temporalities, oral narratives and magical thought. The aspiration to go back to an alleged stage where nature nurtures humans without effort and fatigues, where blossoms and fruits grow simultaneously breaking the progression of seasons, has always been a very dangerous myth in which women, together with all the ones associated with the ‘natural category’, had to pay a very high price. In the work all the ingredients necessary to make a Winogradsky sample—namely calcium, sulfur, cellulose, pond mud and water—have been collected, connecting to the histories of their original locations : from the bleached and polluted sand of Rosignano Solvay, passing through massive extractivism sites such as Carrara marble quarry or Sicilian sulfur mines, to symbols of wilderness and horror like Mount Etna volcano or the psychomagical badlands of Aliano. Looking at different techniques to relate to and manipulate the ‘outside world’, the work explores the myth of nature working in the intersections between science and fiction, chemical reactions and cosmogonic tales, magic and oral storytelling.

16 mm film transferred to Full HD , 5’30’’

Soil of the badlands of Aliano, marble powder and water from the caves of Carrara, sand and cuttlebones from the polluted white beaches of Rosignano Solvay, sulfur deposit from Vulcano in the namesake island, rocks and basalt from Crateri Silvestri of Etna, sulfur powder extracted in Trabonella mine near Caltanisetta, textile and paper