On Thursday 20th June 2019, a collective exhibition inaugurates at PAV Parco Arte Vivente with the works of Marco Bailone, Gea Casolaro, Michelangelo Consani, Leone Contini, Piero Gilardi, Michele Guido, Ugo La Pietra and Wurmkos group. The show propose a reflection on the complementary pair of two strategic goals of ecological movements and their social basis: resistance and resilience.
Resistance, considered in its strong social connotation, can be considered, as said by John Holloway, the expression of a rebel subjectivity which starting from 1968 and its revolutionary requests, it gradually grows in all the continents where the rapacity of capitalism and neoliberalism planned new systems and infrastructures to rob and to pollute the natural environment, crashing with tenacious and long-lasting opposition movements such as, in the case of Italy, NO TAV, NOT TAP and NO MOUS.

Since early 2000, resilience became the other strategic axis based on the crossing of the ambiguous idea of sustainability, and therefore on the merging of various forms of autonomy and social resistance operating on a local level and often already connected between themselves by mutual collaboration relationships.

The historic foundation of resilience identifies in the fact that an autonomous and “wild” nature doesn’t exist anymore because, as Gilles Clément say, today’s nature is hybrid as a result of the complex and entangled interactions occurring between the human forces and those of the biosphere. The ecological resilience movements experiment locally, but in a concrete way, a new homeostatic management of the man-nature relationship.

The resistant/resilience strategy, together with other anti-capitalist movements, such as anti-colonialism, anti-racism and feminism, fight and act with the final goal to change the macropolitics of the globalized ecocide society.
Today’s environmental artists place themselves inside this molecular movement of struggle, increasing with their experiences the clarification of the ecological crisis, the interdependence of social actions and the awareness extent of the Anthorpocene crisis for the masses.

The aim of this exhibition at PAV is to show and divulge the activity of some Italian artists, in accord with the chosen theme, through the realization of specific projects in the interior and external areas of the experimental centre of environmental art.

The invited artist are eight: Marco Bailone who will paint a mural painting about the struggle in Valsusa; Gea Casolaro who will present the video Prima che la notte duri per sempre and a show of images of his installation Vivaio Eternot in Casale Monferrato. Michelangelo Consani who will place the installation of a deer in the PAV’s park as “natural” resistance to art. Leone Contini will realize an arbor with the plantation of various types of cucurbite, whose fruits are typical of the vegetable gardens and the dining halls of the migrant communities in Italy. Piero Gilardi will exhibit his interactive installation Resilience on the sequoia theme. Michele Guido on the one hand will exhibit the sculptures of Ceiba Project and on the other he will cultivate a vegetable garden in the park for the production of seeds of uncommon and ancient vegetable species. Ugo La Pietra will place inside PAV’s courtyard five gazebos with bonsai and symbolic objects of the ecosophy while, simultaneously, he will offer a graphic exposition about his experiences in the urban ecology field. The group Wurmkos will realise a “topia” vineyard incorporating a convivial space on the slopes of PAV’s hill.

PAV – Parco Arte Vivente – Via Giordano Bruno 31, 10134 Torino, Italy, +39.011.3182235, www.parcoartevivente.it

Some photos of Marco Bailone's painting about the struggle in Val di Susa, above a photo before painting...

La montagna ferma il treno ad alta velocità, The mountain stops the high speed train.