Urbanautica

IN-BETWEEN NATURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY

by Steve Bisson

All this manifests a state of anxiety, an aesthetic of waiting, and a colorful misunderstanding. A sense of helplessness expresses an impending tragedy in the sublimation of the end.

The way to represent, conceptualize, criticize, overturn, and dissect the relationship between human beings and their environment has been at the center of Urbanautica's visual and anthropological research for over ten years. Our Annual Institute Awards Contest is always an opportunity to collect addresses, ideas, perspectives, arguments, criticisms, awareness, and possibilities. Each of these also carries further chances for in-depth research and investigations on different approaches to the medium, while offering keys to interpret the theme, which is an excellent stimulus for our observatory. We like to dive into our shorlisted and special mentions lists to find input for our Journal.

© Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro from the series 'Nó'

Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro's 'Nó' series (special mention Urbanautica Awards 2021 - category: People and Communities) leads us to observe a landscape cutout converted into a gym for social inclusion and environmental education. The narrative in the urban hub of Amadora, an infrastructural crossroads surrounded by industrial slabs. Here a retired Cape Verdeans community have created an island, "a place of subsistence, social gathering, of stories that are told between the (dis)illusions and the memories of an absent country" nelle parole dell'autore. "Older Cape Verdeans, now retired, came to Portugal in the 60’s, this was the colonizing country. A time when the Portuguese dictatorial government promoted the Cape Verdeans coming to this country to address the lack of manpower in the public and private construction industry. In the 80s most of these immigrants settled themselves in the Lisbon´ suburbs. Living with economic difficulties, these people cultivate pieces of land along the road, and with luck, namely, if it rains, can take some food for their family." This reportage, therefore, documents a cell of hope, conscience, and sociability.

© Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro from the series 'Nó'

Doron Oved's point of view is more analytical and topological in the series "Wild Life" (special mention Urbanautica Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment and Perspecitves), which catalyzes attention starting from banal fragments of everyday life, characteristics of modern life, and the resulting leisure culture. "An ice cream cup cover with printed clouds left lying on the ground, a cow statue by the side of a road, an electric wooden pole embraced by plastic pipes and wires;a felled tree whose severed branches seem to refuse to part; these diverse scenes attend themselves as a silent proof for wider situations, while objects reveal clues about their culture environment." Elements not admittedly dramatic make up a puzzle at times alienating and satirical. Visual friction leads to questioning cultural aspects and, therefore, moving beyond the surface of things to look for a deeper reason.

© Doron Oved from the series "Wild Life"

Francesca Macis's work "Il giorno in cui si spense il sole" (special mention Urbanautica Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives) adopts a more speculative approach to reality in an apocalyptic key. The world's end is a frequent and paradoxical leitmotif in postmodernity devoted to fluid progress that struggles to look back. Therefore, reality and fiction now penetrate each other, mixing their boundaries to give shape to a new, "other," different dimension. Macis gives a face to all this. "The narration is an exploration between invisible realities and photographic truths, it illustrates an hypothetical end of the world when the sun, after the sunset, turn off, replaced by the moon, a star, or perhaps the sun itself -anemic-, which plunges the Earth into an eternal night, and envelops things in an unnatural light. In the space of the image, the metamorphosis of reality takes place, which is shaped by the technical possibilities of photography, and which creates a credible parallel reality. Present and future coexist in a speculative scenario that transforms illusions and nightmares of our imperfect present into possibilities or catastrophes. Reflections, born from a fantasy, that want to investigate our reality, projected into an -other- time and place, to see our present’s critical issues". All this manifests a state of anxiety, an aesthetic of waiting, and a colorful misunderstanding. A sense of helplessness expresses an impending tragedy in the sublimation of the end.

The escape, the exile, the innocence, the pandemic, the resistance, the alternative, a path that traces a possibility, the "Unlocked" project by Diego Sartorio and Benedetta di Ruggiero (special mention Urbanautica Awards 2021 - category: People and Communities) is interested in all this. Self-sufficiency as a manifesto for a transition towards sustainable and more harmonious life models. And to understand our footprint on the planet. Hence the experience of the prototype ecovillages of an alternation of thought and often the reaffirmation of a metaphysical dimension of existence (the latter long removed from the secular and productive Western doctrine). "The need for closer contact with nature has been strongly felt, and also for an escape from individualism and from a sense of isolation, made even worse by the restrictive measures implemented. Many have expressed the desire to change their lifestyle to divert it towards more sustainable choices, capable of combining scientific and economic progress with the health and well-being of people and the environment that hosts them." Perhaps Covid has awakened consciences, or it is just a temporary illusion.

Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021

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