Giuseppe Licari
 

 

 

With my practice I focus on the anthropological metabolic processes devising contemporary landscape. I am particularly interested on how our environment has been transformed in the last century through the industrial revolution and great acceleration. Since the Neolithic revolution, through religion and particularly with modernity, humanity has constantly moved out and in contrast with the natural world. Nature became a concept to be exploited rather than a place to live in harmony. Now we are aware that life outside of the natural world is not possible. Our impact on the natural world is so huge, that has been defined as a new geological era. Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century noted that we know much more about the stars and the universe around us than we know about the soil underneath our feet. More recently scientists and philosophers have defined the zone in which all life on Earth is created and sustained as The Critical Zone. It is the heterogeneous, near surface environment in which complex interactions involving rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources. Capitalistic society has been driven by the constant exploitation of natural resources, and infinity growth. This has left behind a new layer of cultural heritage (trash, mines, pollution, depleted soils), which speaks out loud of our society and its habits in anthropogeological terms. This new layer we have created is the humus on which future generations of humans and non-humans have to live.