Urbanautica

OF TERRAE INCOGNITA AND UNCOMFORTABLE VIEWS

by Steve Bisson

One wonders what animals perceive of the landscape. Probably they are concerned of these weird victims of a mystical unease.

© Spiros Zervoudakis from the series "Terra Incognita"

The actual mechanisms that produce and transform the landscape are often invisible, dictated by political and economic logic, often unknown or incomprehensible to most, and decided in another foreign place. The landscape, therefore, appears as a resultant, an outcome of a process of purely human but extraneous actions controlled from a distance. Consequently, we think of the landscape as a given or assimilated cultural dimension, sometimes almost as abstract as a postcard. A representation, as an image, in which one can most recognize or feel a sense of belonging. The series "Sludge" by Krzysztof Szewczyk (special mention Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment, and Perspectives) slips into the wake of these thoughts, reconstructing a stage in the shape of a meadow located in the industrial region of Upper Silesian. Here it tells of transformations dictated by mining activities. "... Situated between the highway and the power plant until the 1960s, this area worked as a sand mine that supplied sand to nearby coal mines. The sand served to fill empty pits from mined coal. In the second half of the 1960s, when the sand mine was closed, groundwater filled the abandoned excavation, and the lake appeared. The artificial lake was a place of recreation and has survived in the memory of local community members. In the second half of the seventies, the lake was covered with ash and waste from the nearby power plant." Slowly nature takes possession of these spaces, giving life to the dance of reconversion. The signs slowly fade like withered memories. Time does not forgive, and illusions vanish. Yet photography holds their meanings for a moment.

© Krzysztof Szewczyk from the series "Sludge"

To witness the present, do it with bitterness but with uncompromising clarity. And to feel part of the landscape, like condemned people. Carmelo Stompo's vision of his own Sicily leaves no escape routes. The series "The Land Under Your Feet" (spcial mentions Awards 2021 - category: Anthropology and Territories) is a homily of objectivity, a sample of scars. "Erosion, chemical pollution, salinization, climate change, intensive cultivation, abandonment of the countryside, overbuilding, fires, wicked political choices have compromised the quality of the soil with an enormous loss of productive land every year. Poor land generates poor people; poor land causes more frequent floods and droughts and mass migrations beyond the borders and towards the cities. Poor people develop a social crisis, a Sicily that today is at risk of social desertification". Yet in this landscape of discomfort the firm position of denunciation itself becomes salvific, a source of provision for collective and non-renouncing thinking.

© Carmelo Stompo from the series "The Land Under Your Feet"

A human posture, anthropocentric, solitary, and confused, is at the center of the "Terra incognita" imagined by Spiros Zervoudakis (special mention Awards 2021 - category: Nature, Environment and Perspectives). Among uncertain spaces, human figures stand out in unlikely, almost alien situations. And this invites us to reflect on our species' evolution from being an integral part of cosmogony to a paranoid ruler of natural resources. "The memory of a destructive flood exists even in the most ancient texts; in the Gilgamesh epic, Deucalion's myth, Noah's ark, and many others. In all those ancient myths, the gods decided to punish the corrupted humankind. Several centuries later, science removed the mythical "cosmogony." Man adapted the environment to his needs and used his unique ability to live against all the other living beings on 'his planet.' Today, he is dominant on the planet and possibly the first species to record their disappearance." One wonders what animals perceive of the landscape. Probably they are concerned of these weird victims of a mystical unease.

This sense of fragility rages in Simon Parec's photographs (special mention Awards 2021 - category: Nature. Environment and Perspectives). "The title Warm-Being is derived from word "well-being" where the word "well" is replaced by the word "warm", the phrase efers to the content of the work and the importance of heat, not only local but also global. The work should be a reflection on human fragility and at the same time human insensitivity." With an objective and conceptually committed look, these images reflect on the planet as a home, the meaning of housing, and even more of living together. The objects portrayed are as if lightened by their weight and suddenly suspended in an indeterminate atmosphere. What if the landscape was a coexistence? What if climate change was a thermometer not only of temperature but of an ability to exist together?

Urbanautica Institute Awards 2021

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