Ruins of the city hall and prisons in the Archaeological Park of Carbonara, Campania,
remains of the ancient Medioeval town of Carbonara destroyed by an earthquake in 1930.

Missanga, Tan, Obsidian

It’s been almost a month since I got back from southern Italy. I was very busy during the three weeks (July 15~August 4) I was there. It is now almost autumn and I am looking back on the whole trip.

In southern Italy, it was hot every day, the sunlight was so strong after 7 a.m. and I felt a little dangerous. At night, however, it was even chilly in the mountains.




Ruins of an ancient Roman open-air market in Pozzuoli, Campania (commonly known as the “Tempio di Serapide(Temple of the Serapide)”)

My red misanga (“catenella” in Italian) on my right wrist matches my tanned skin. They are both remnants from southern Italy. The shiny and beautiful obsidian next to my computer, which fits in my palm, seems to give me energy. When I had free time, I visited the ruins of Pozzuoli located west of Naples (Anfiteatro Flavio that is the ancient Greek theater, and Temple of Serapis that is the ancient Roman outdoor market) and bought this stone that was taken from Lake Averno nearby. This area known as “Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei=burning fields)” is a huge 13 km-long caldera with pyroclastic hills, and several towns including Pozzuoli are located within it. A major eruption is possible in the future.

Obsidian is my favorite stone. In Japan, good quality obsidian is available from Suwa district where I am involved in the “Forest for Dialogue and Creativity” (Chino City, Nagano Prefecture). The stone was transported to distant areas in the middle Jomon period (c. 2500–1500 BCE). These glassy and sharp stones generated by the rapid chill of the meteoritic magma at the time of the eruption seem to contain mass energy.

Missanga,Tan, Obsidian and more…various experiences in Southern Italy, engraved in my body, spirit and memory, are still pulsating.

Emergence of characteristics as a whole in Italy and its background

Everything we experience at each second is etched in our body and memories. Situations that easily exceed our expectations and preconceptions in a place far from everyday life provide us with a perfect opportunity to reexamine and relativize what we thought was obvious. This trip was a survival experience that demanded me to cope with a flexible mindset.

I have frequently encountered unexpected situations abroad, but this time it was incomparably full of surprises. In southern Italy, especially in small towns we visited, it was beyond Japanese standards, even exceeding global standards. Due to these factors, their local lifestyle and culture remain distinct and alive since ancient times. It is nothing but precious.

Nothing went on schedule there, but what was scheduled was implemented after all even if it was late or not systematically organized. At the end, it was complete and fulfilling. I faced unexpected situations every day in terms of a course of action, system, technique, etc., but everyone regarded them as natural and could cope with flexibility. The ultimate goal was not to finish things as planned, but to value the “unexpected emergence” through reading the ever-changing situations and making them creative.

July 15, evening before the EIR Kickoff Forum at Polinaria (Abruzzo), an artist residency

Maybe I am not the only one who feels that the worldview that is more in tune with human instincts and emotions as well as the fluidity of nature that transcends humans is more prevalent there than a human-centered system.

This time I met with various people from different areas. I could read from their expressions that their lives were deeply connected with local nature, history and culture. I received a lot of energy from them.

Such energies were nurtured while people faced severe nature and frequent disasters in each area. Many towns that I visited suffered from disasters such as earthquakes, eruptions and floods. Still at present, they have problems regarding the environment, economy and so on. But because of them, it seems to me that energy for life rooted in love and bond is overflowing. I hope I can convey part of that energy.

“Southern Italy” and its geography

The term “southern Italy” differs when Italy is divided into southern/northern regions or southern/central/northern regions. Wikipedia notes that the regions included in southern Italy vary according to theorists and perspectives. It also notes that the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT/ Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) says that there are six regions: Campania, Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria. Additionally, Sicily is often included followed by Lazio and Sardinia sometimes.

The areas I visited this time are Campania, Abruzzo, Molise, and Puglia covering a little north of Naples, sandwiched between the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west and the Adriatic Sea to the east, in the middle of the boot-shaped peninsula’s shin and calf. Located in the northern part of southern Italy, there are no world-class tourist destinations other than Naples and its environs, and the region is “rural” (with the word “countryside,” it is not fully translated) where agriculture, cattle raising, and fishing are rooted in locality.

Like Japan, Italy extends from north to south. There are many unique towns and villages (basic municipalities called “comune”) formed according to the topography along the seacoast, on the mountains and hills, plains, caves, etc. since the Middle Ages or the ancient times. In the area I visited, I could see a series of autonomous towns (like “archipelago”). The whole peninsula was united as Italy only in 1861 at the end of the Edo period in Japan.

HILLS LIFE作成 /Created by HILLS LIFE

The northern part of southern Italy is geographically the extension of the Alps, and from east to west having a series of volcanoes including the aforementioned Flegrei Plain, volcano Vesuvius south of Naples and islands to the west (such as Ischia, and Procida that we visited). (Other volcanoes in southern Italy include Sicily and Stromboli islands in the south).

Geographically, Albania and Greece are located east across the Adriatic Sea, and Turkey is beyond them. The Tyrrhenian Sea is close to France and Spain with Corsica (France) just north of Sardinia to the northwest. At the tip of the toe of the boot is the island of Sicily and just beyond that is Africa.

In terms of a cultural region since ancient times, the areas I visited have major roads connecting Europe and Greece including the Appian Way connecting Rome and Greece. They have been inhabited by a diverse population including the Samnites.

The archaeological museums in each town (many of them housed in castles on the hill) provide a glimpse into such history. The numerous tableware, tools and ornaments including Greek wine jars with elaborate depictions of Greek mythological tales as well as earlier Stone Age objects vividly evoke our imagination of exchange between people, technology and culture.

The mountains are rocky, and many towns were built on them. Because of the frequent earthquakes and eruptions, sediments from the eruptions cover vast areas forming clayey strata. High quality wine, olives and wheat are produced in this soil.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have caused major disasters, e.g., towns were wiped out (including Pompeii). Often towns were abandoned and built from scratch in the adjacent areas, and some of the towns we visited had such a history. The possibility of catastrophe, its traces, and fertility exist side by side on a daily basis, and the people enjoy the bounty of the earth as an irreplaceable source of sustenance while being exposed to the harshness of nature and the danger of life at times.

Nature cannot be controlled by humans. Living close to such nature has shaped the worldview of the people in this region. People have lived in the harsh natural environment, sometimes sharing water, food, and resources. Even after the unification of Italy, such a worldview remained strong in southern Italy, located far from the center of the country, and I heard that there were active protests against the government. Many people emigrated to the New World due to disasters and poverty.

Southern Italy and me

This trip to southern Italy was part of a joint project “EIR (Energy in the Rural)” (2021-) between Liminaria, an independent organization that organizes Interferenze, a small-scale festival of sound, media art and food since 2003, and ACAC (Aomori Contemporary Art Centre) in Japan. I conducted research and talks in four different cities as a resident curator.

Poster from the Liminaria program (Palermo, Sicily) in which Shikata participated in the fall of 2018

In the program “EIR,” artists from Japan and Italy stay in the other country and conduct research on the theme of “energy,” making works and presenting them. Last year, the program was implemented online due to COVID-19, and this year, artist MIHARA Soichiro and curator (me, SHIKATA Yukiko) were sent to Italy. In 2023, artist Nicola di Croce and curator Leandro Pisano will visit Japan. In addition to our participation in four residencies this time, Mihara and I participated in the Interferenze Festival and the Italian City of Culture “Procida2022” in Procida Island.

The founder of Liminaria is Leandro Pisano who is based in San Martino valle Caudina (abbreviated below as San Martino vC), town in Campania (the site of this year’s Interferenze Festival) located in a scenic valley about a two-hour drive northeast of Naples. Since 2003, this festival Liminaria has been held in various locations in southern Italy. In addition, under the name of Liminaria, a short-term “micro” artist residency program has been conducted in the past several years. It has established and leads a network of artist-in-residence organizations in Italy in recent years.

I first met Leandro at the end of 2009 in Naples, where I was visiting to participate in a conference on digital archiving. I felt the importance of his vision and activities, and when he came to Japan in 2010, I organized a small festival “Interferenze Seeds Tokyo (IST) 2010” as a Tokyo version of Interferenze and asked him to give a talk. I was invited to participate in the Interferenze Festtival in Bisaccia (Campania) that summer and the Liminaria program in Sicily Island in 2018. When I organized the “Micro Media Festival Seeds (MMFS) 2020” (co-organized with DOMMUNE) to explore the possibilities of an online festival in a post-pandemic context in 2020, I asked Leandro and the guests of IST2010 to participate and our exchange continued.

In autumn 2020 when artist-in-residence programs around the world looked for ways to go on with COVID-19, I wondered if ACAC and Liminaria could collaborate while taking advantage of their respective characteristics and worked as a liaison between the two. Despite the differences between the public (ACAC) and independent (Liminaria) organizations, I felt that their views on rurality and the direction of their past activities would evoke unprecedented emergence. The collaboration was realized and “EIR” was born out of the dialogue between Leandro, ACAC curator MURAKAMI Aya and myself.

What is EIR (Energy in the Rural)?

In EIR, the possibilities that are generated through residencies of artists involved in art and technology are discussed from the aspect of “energy” while regional characteristics of Aomori/Southern Italy and the challenges they face in the context of “rural” are in view.

Wind turbine seen over a wheat field just after harvest (from the road through Puglia to Aquilonia, Campania).

It was Leandro who specifically brought up the idea of “energy” and one of the things that triggered it was a huge number of wind turbine generators that had been installed in several regions of southern Italy in the 21st century.

Wind power was initially welcomed as a renewable energy source, but the landscape is ruined by the installation of generators, and it is also becoming a problem in Japan in regard to its influence on the environment. We spoke to several people in the area, and it seemed that the issues were complicated. For example, there are political and economic structures that promote wind power. The Italian government offers a subsidy for half the costs to foreign companies to attract them, but the profit gained by the local area is said to be negligible. I heard that the mafia is also involved. The generated electricity is sent to another city and the local people buy electricity from there. The global economy only widens the disparity and there is almost no benefit for the local community. For whom are the generators installed and who is the electric power for?

Wind turbine seen over a wheat field just after harvest (from the road through Puglia to Aquilonia, Campania).

Actually when I took a bus from the airport in Rome across the Italian peninsula east to Pescara in Abruzzo along the Adriatic Sea, I saw a lot of wind turbines in the mountains. During a four-hour drive to Aquilonia in Campania the next day, I saw them in many placese. In Aquilonia, there were wind turbines both near and far from the hotel where I was staying. And on July 20, on the way from Aquilonia to Monteverde, an old town on the outskirts of the city, there were wind turbines as far as the eye could see in the mountains with a great view. I was totally speechless.

Of course, “energy” in “EIR” does not only cover electric power. It includes energy of nature such as sunlight, wind, soil, and water; the energy of the earth (e.g., crustal movement); the animals and plants nurtured by the earth and human energies. In addition, it is extended to a wide variety of human creations such as art and culture, and non-human entities. It includes not only visible and material things, but also invisible and immaterial things, and things like art that evoke various interpretations in people and generate energies of imagination and creation.

Since the modern era, everything on earth has been consumed by humans as resources. There are human-centered economic values in the background, and they were promoted by values based on Western modernity. Especially since the 19th-century globalization, standardization has been promoted. Local regions were considered backward, and since the latter half of the 20th century, the gap between the center and the rural has widened even more. A schema of regional dependence on the center has not wavered, rather it has been reinforced.

Small towns in rural areas have nurtured a rich natural environment, history, and culture since ancient times to continue to autonomously produce and disseminate their unique local crops, products, and culture. By staying in the region, sound artists and media artists who can critically make use of contemporary science and technology bring out latent possibilities in the region and open up dialogue among people. Interferenze and Liminaria (Interferenze is a festival and Liminaria is an artist-in-residence program) have implemented festivals and residence programs for artists in the age of the Internet while having their roots in the “rural.” This could be considered creative resistance/resistive creation from the environmental, social, and political viewpoints through art.

The term “Anthropocene” has become widespread in the last few years, but artists have been experiencing it firsthand and asking questions about it through their works and projects. Such existences as early sensors repeat theories and practices in rural areas in EIR. EIR has both sides of probing into geographical, historical, social, environmental, and economic backgrounds of the region and opening dialogue with people.

Italy: Potential of Rural x Art

In Italy, “agritourism” is currently promoted in various regions, and as far back as 1986, the Slow Food Movement began (in the Piedmont region of northern Italy), and at around the same time, a movement to preserve and utilize local food, traditional culture and townscapes that had been handed down from generation to generation developed as a practice against globalization under the concept of “territorio.”

According to Barbara Staniscia*, territorio is defined as the combined whole of various aspects including land, soil, landscape, history, culture, tradition, and local community.ーHidenobu Jinnai. (2022) From Centro Storico to Territorio: Reevaluation of the Countryside and Its Revival. In: Junko Kimura and Hidenobu Jinnai (eds.), “Strategie Territoriali in Italia: Reviving Urban-Rural Interaction.” (Tokyo: Hakuto Shobo).

KIMURA Junko and JINNAI Hidenobu (eds.), Italy’s Territorio Strategy: Reviving Urban-Rural Interaction, 2022, Hakuto Shobo.

In the 1960s, there were independent media activities represented by free radio such as in Bologna (northern Italy), and in southern Italy including Naples, there were active bottom-up activities by artists. Until the unification of Italy, towns existed autonomously, and people’s lives were rooted in their local communities. It is precisely because of these efforts to preserve such life or even regenerate it after losing it that Italy is now a country that boasts a rich local culture unparalleled anywhere in the world.

Several years ago, I used to watch a TV program called “The Story of a Small Village in Italy” (BS Nittele). Although the program was arbitrary in its content, the lives of people introduced in it were humble yet lively. There is a world that is not centered around the monetary economy and efficiency. There is love and affirmation of nature, food, and living with one’s family and the community.

I could feel it from people I met in southern Italy. They seem to be close to not only the living people but also the dead, those to be born, and non-human beings. The word “globalization” slips aside as something abstract.

streets of Aquilonia. With straight streets promoted by Mussolini (see “Natural Disasters and the City” below).

Actually, when I stayed in a small town (Mihara Soichiro and I were the first Japanese to be seen in Aquilonia!), we called out, “bon giorno” and “ciao!” to passers-by and waved to people in the distance. They all smiled back at us.

Another thing I felt was the change in values between the central cities and the rural areas. Especially in the post-pandemic era, rural areas have become places with the potential of choosing life/work according to one’s own will. More people settled into rural areas, and a number of young people returned to their hometowns. Attempts to disseminate information and promote exchange within the region have begun such as artist residencies and festivals, e.g., Liminaria, and programs targeted at children. I felt acutely that when I delve into local issues, I run into economic and environmental problems, which consequently are connected to global issues. In such an era, new possibilities are emerging for the region and art through addressing “rurality.”

Mihara Soichiro’s Charm

Let me first introduce where I stayed. I took a 30-minute car ride from Pescara on the Adriatic Sea into the mountains to the residence for artists Pollinaria to stay overnight, and then went southwest on a 4-hour drive to Aquilonia, an inland city on the hill to stay for 9 days. Then I went northwest for 2 hours towards Naples and stayed in San Martino vC, town in between the two national parks, for 1 week to participate in Interferenze Festival. Then we moved for 2 hours to go to Naples and took a 40-minute boat ride to Procida to stay overnight to participate in the Italian City of Culture “Procida 2022.” I stayed in Naples on the last two nights personally.

At the first stop in Pollinaria, I met Mihara Soichiro who had been staying there for 10 days already. We traveled together from July 15 to August 1 and conducted research in various locations. He made installations, performances, and took part in talk programs while I participated in talks and forums. We met many people in each place, and I felt the importance of the land and the people. He has his own worldview and presents a variety of works based on his research and experiments. Since March 11, 2011(the day of East Japan Earthquake followed by tsunami and the severer accident of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant), he has been developing all his activities under the “blank project.” Last year, when he took a bird’s-eye view of his project that had continued for 10 years, he realized that they were all related to air.

This time, what he created in each place are the installation “Study of Air” (2017) and the new performance “l’aria del giorno/Air of the Day.”*

July 28, 2022 Mihara Soichiro Installation “Study of Air” at UNICEF room (ex-ECA), Interferenze Festival (San Martino Valle Caudina, Campania)

The work “Study of Air” visualizes wind in real time. Low frequencies from multiple microphones that are installed outdoors are output as wind from the fans installed indoors (lined up in the same position as the microphones). In the shifting winds, a loop made up of ultra-thin vinyl tape continues to move delicately as if to dance. The viewers not only observe it from outside but also move inside to play with the movement of the loop while their body movements affect the wind flow and the vinyl’s movement. At each venue, people of all ages played freely with the work.

July 23, 2022 Mihara Soichiro performance “L’aria del giorno (Today’s Air)” at the Ethnographic Museum, MEdA (Aquilonia, Campania) Photo: Leandro Pisano /Liminaria

In “Air of the Day,” the artist collected multiple plants at each residency site and ground them with his self-made grinder (run by a solar panel). In the performance, he let the audience enjoy the scent of the materials heated from below by a beeswax candle and sealed the scented air in a transparent plastic bag. The ingredients of the local plants are converted into smell and diffused as air. Explaining the afore-mentioned process in Italian, Mihara drew the audience’s attention and attracted them each time.

He showed these two works at four places, and the installation gave a different impression in each location. The performances diffused the different scent due to the materials from each location, and they all received very favorable reactions. During his stay Mihara also helped harvesting wheat, toured a hopfield and brewery, visited winery and helped work in a vineyard, and physically experienced the relationship between people and the earth at each place. He also made research on local wine and food and conducted activities that integrated him into the community.

From Pollinaria to Aquilonia

The EIR Kickoff Forum, held in the evening of July 15, just after my arrival in southern Italy, was held outside Pollinaria, artist-in-residence facility run by Gaetano, producer of quality olive oil and wine, located between the Adriatic Sea and Gran Sasso, one of the major mountains in this region. Cubes of straw were arranged as chairs for the audience, and they created a simple and nice-smelling stage in nature. The talk show began smoothly with related personnel from afar, local producers and artists, children, and dogs in attendance.

The participants consisted of a wide variety of people: Gaetano, Leandro Pisano, Mihara, me, local art producer, molecular biologist, and cultural economist. The second half of the talk show was lively on topics such as art, DNA and relations between body and mind, but without an interpreter from English to Italian!. Although the two Japanese（Mihara and I）could talk only about EIR and local art in English, it was an invaluable experience to share the time from dusk to the night in wonderful nature.

Ethnographic Museum (MEdA), Aquilonia, Campania

On the next day, we drove southwest to Aquilonia for 4 hours over rolling hills and ceaselessly inland. In the middle of nowhere, suddenly an orderly town came into view. In this city where we stayed for 9 days, the Ethnographic Museum (MEdA) was our host and we stayed at a hotel. Mihara’s exhibition and performance took place at this museum on the last day, and during our stay, we actively visited neighboring cities.

Wheat harvesting tools and overnight huts for the work in the field, on display at the Ethnographic Museum of Aquilonia (MeDA), Campania.

The museum exhibits daily life tools and occupational tools used about 100 years ago in this region. The idea for the museum was conceived by teacher Beniamino Tartaglia (1934—2006), and local people who agreed to his enthusiasm visited local houses in a bottom-up system to collect tools that were no longer used, renovated a vacant building, and opened the museum in 1996. Wine making, olive oil compression, harvesting wheat, and shoe manufacturing—they are all handmade and soaked with people’s sweat and passion. I am overwhelmed with the idea of how much life has changed in the past 100 years. It is something that happened not only in this region but also all over the world including Japan.

The director of the museum is Enzo Tenore who leads an innovative movement. Being an architect, he designed “House of Culture” in the city, and is currently building an artist-in-residence facility, etc. Aquilonia is changing on the axis of culture, and it is based on the city’s autonomous spirit, which made the museum for the people by the people possible.

Natural Disasters and the City

Aquilonia’s autonomous spirit also stems from the fact that the city was built after the great earthquake in 1930. There is a small mountain in view from the slope going down to the museum. It used to be where people lived, called Carbonara, and this town was destroyed by the earthquake. People moved to the nearby gently sloping hill and made it into a new city, naming it Aquilonia according to the name of the place in ancient times. Aquilonia was designed by Mussolini’s city plan (including the earthquake-resistant design) and has a linear structure.

We visited the remains of Carbonara (Carbonara Archaeological Park), which was a major transportation hub at the middle point of the Appian Way that connected Rome and Bari on the Adriatic Sea. The destruction and loss caused by the earthquake motivated Tartaglia to make a museum.

On the last evening in Aquilonia on July 23, we had an EIR-related talk, Mihara’s performance and installation, and it happened to be the 92nd anniversary of the earthquake. The red misanga I mentioned at the beginning was a handmade one put on my wrist by a woman whom I met that day.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I realized on this trip that many towns in southern Italy were relocated and reconstructed after disasters such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In Bisaccia, about an hour away from Aquilonia, people moved out after the 1981 earthquake and a new Bisaccia was built. Old towns with beautiful castles and streets have few inhabitants, but they were bustling with people at night.

San Martino Valle Caudina (hereafter San Martino vC), September 20 Piazza. A mountain stream runs below and the scar of a landslide runs diagonally across the mountain beyond.

San Martino vC where we stayed for a week after Aquilonia was an old town formed along a mountain stream on the slope gently going down, and where we stayed was an elevated ground at the foot of the mountain looking down on an old castle. The nearby mountain was freshly marked by a landslide. I heard that there were two earthflows in this century and some people were killed. In recent years, a river flood also caused damage. There is a stream running right under the central square in the city, and it used to be made into a culvert, but after the flood, part of it is made open.

Procida where we visited next was an island made by a volcano, and it was named after it. And the Pozzuoli that I introduced at the beginning is right in the caldera.

We have many natural disasters in Japan such as earthquakes and tsunami, but I have never heard of the whole town immigrating. In Japan, even though there was severe damage, people would reconstruct the town. One of the reasons could be that the houses are made of stone in Italy whereas the houses in Japan are mostly made of wood. Both in Japan and Italy, people have had many natural disasters but benefit from nature at the same time. It seems that both countries share the same attitude of being in touch with nature while not forgetting death and trying to enjoy life for the sake of it.

Perceiving the “essential movement”: the Interferenze Festival

The venue of live performances Leandro started the Interferenze Festival in 2003 in San Martino vC, where he lives, was a water mill at the back of the square that was damaged by a muddy river in later years. It is an essential place in town. The theme for the Interferenze Festival held from July 28 to 30 was “Substantiae Motus (“essential movement” in Latin).” Exhibitions of works, talks, screenings, and workshops were held at multiple venues, and the square was crowded every night for live concerts.

Go Dugong live at Piazza San Martino vC,　Interferenze Festival, September 20 Photo: Leandro　Pisano/Liminaria

Most of the talks and screenings were held outdoors in venues such as a beautiful garden of an old mansion from early evenings to the night. Four sets of artists stayed there and showed their works. The participating artists and panelists were from Italy or Europe, except for Mihara and myself who were in the EIR group. In addition to the EIR talk, I spoke at the Electronic Art Rural Forum, which focused on the creation of a European network of artist residencies and the potential for new usage of nature and technology in rural areas.

　
Soil collection in the suburbs of San Martino vC (point 1), Andrea Carretto & Raffaella Spagna “Soil as Experience” workshop at Interferenze Festival.

One of the interesting projects developed this year was “Soil as Experience” by resident artists Andrea Carretto and Raffaella Spagna, based in Turin and both having backgrounds in geology and urban design (curated by Alessandra Pioselli, based in Milan). They conducted a five-day workshop on soil and presented the results in a performance at the end. In the first phase of the workshop, they explored nearby mountains and rivers, and collected soil. I participated in collecting soil, visited two places that were 20 minutes away by car, and collected argillaceous soil under the scorching sun. The clay derived from the accumulated volcanic ash of Mt. Vesuvius, more than 2 hours away by car. The artists said they would make objects using this soil.

Soil collection in the vicinity of San Martino vC, once a seabed (site 2), Andrea Carretto & Raffaella Spagna, “Soil as Experience” (Interferenze Festival)

The performance took place in an empty lot on the edge of town, a few steps from the street, with a hole measuring several decimeters by one meter, and about one meter deep. Around it were different kinds of stones and pieces of plastic or glass placed zonally. There were no less than 1,000 pieces, and they were all dug out of the hole. They were arranged in a chronological order from the deepest stratum to the shallowest with the recent ones in the front.

The artists placed the objects of organic form made from the soil they had collected the other day into the hole one after another and began to fill the hole with the soil they had dug out. Gradually the hole was filled in and the surface was leveled off to look natural. They did it so that no one would notice something was buried there. This is a secret birth of a new “archaeological site” (in case it is found out later) made of the soil from the volcanic ash.

What they did was visualization and exchange of soil deposited by the volcanic eruption and objects (artificial and partly non-recyclable) in the strata that have been accumulated in the last several decades. This project embodies the stratum generation called “Anthropocene” by probing into the actual soil and the earth. The fact that something of this magnitude was buried in the ground changes the way we look at the region. It makes us realize that there would be such (or even bigger-scale) places around the world.

A hole is dug, buried pebbles and plastic are placed on the ground, and objects made of collected soil are placed and filled back in.
Carretto & Raffaella Spagna, “Soil as Experience” (Interferenze Festival)Photo: Daniela Allocca /Liminaria

The artists asked us to imagine what sleeps in the earth where we live and to let the passive and silent earth tell us about it. They actually dug up the invisible and the hidden, which is buried yet actually exists, to make it visible and ask people about it. Carretto and Spagna demonstrated that art was a transdisciplinary space for perceiving the “essential movement.”

Wind, Waves, Sea—and Art

We sailed to Procida Island on July 31 from Naples, and in the evening of that day, Mihara conducted his performance “Air of the Day” in the Liminaria section of “Procida 2022” (Italian Capital of Culture) to conclude our residency. The venue was the most scenic spot looking over the famous pastel-colored houses along the seashore. He roasted plants including the island’s famous lemon and wild arugula growing at the site and shared the scent with the island’s air and sealed it in the transparent packet. The open environment was wonderful with the breeze across the island, and it was the unforgettable performance among the four I had seen.

July 31, 2022 Mihara Soichiro performance “L’aria del giorno (Today’s Air)” at the Italian Cultural City “Procida2022” (Terra Murata district, Procida Island, Campania) Photo: Leandro Pisano/Liminaria

On August 1, the installation “Study of Air” was presented at a former Catholic church. Microphones were set up outdoors, and low frequencies detected in real time were released as wind from the indoor fans. A delicate loop of vinyl floated in the air as if dancing. While the work reflected different winds and spaces at the four locations including this one, the experience here gave me goosebumps.

July 31, 2022 From left: Shikata, Agostino Riitano (director of “Procida2022”), Mihara Soichiro, and Leandro Pisano. In front of the symbolic object of “Procida2022” (Terra Murata district, Procida Island, Campania) Courtesy of Liminaria

Inside the large church, there was a space between the altar and the area where people took seats (I have never seen a church designed like that!), and the work was installed in the center. The circle transparent vinyl tape continued to dance delicately according to the wind. When I got closer to the work, I saw an engraving of skull on the white marble floor in the center of the work as memento mori. The church where the worshippers gathered was turned into a space for art, and the circular vinyl tape reflecting the change in nature looked as if it were playing with the skull.

In a space of the former church, the work made us get a glimpse of the area where the boundaries of life/death and life/non-life are intertwined.

August 1, 2022 Mihara Soichiro Installation “Study of Air” at former St. Giacomo’s Church, Italian Cultural City “Procida2022” (Procida Island) Photo: Elena Biserna

That morning, Leandro and I spent some time in the nearby sea. The coast was rocky and steep like the whole island. We were soaked in the comfort of the seawater, which was thick like a soup of life with all sorts of things melted into it.

Wind, waves, and the sea—the natural world never stops moving. At present, however, the world is full of human-mediated movements and control. They control nature and the whole world including humans. Moreover, algorithms continue to operate beyond human intentions and awareness.

Southern Italy is filled with a worldview rooted in actual nature and things. And material, visible, and audible things are connected to immaterial, invisible, and inaudible things.

July 31, 2022 Night view of Procida Island Photo: Leandro Pisano/Liminaria

On this trip, I was able to witness the site where rural reality of southern Italy and reality disseminated by the artists resonate. Artists make use of a wide variety of materials and information beyond analog/digital and lead us to the world of different perceptions. And it worked mutually with the potential of southern Italy.

In EIR, the results of this residency will be made public through talks and text. Next summer, there will be participants for the residency from Italy to Aomori, and a festival will take place at ACAC in Aomori with artists and curators from Italy holding exhibitions and events.

I have a feeling that EIR will mutually inspire the realities of southern Italy and Aomori, and open up the potential of respective “rurality” and the potential of art.

*This text is translation of the article “Ecosophic Future 12” (September 17, 2022, HILLS LIFE)