Evoluzioni In-formi
project developed with Marco Gehlhar, words by Stefano Solaro
October 2019, out on C41Magazine
We found ourselves reflecting together while the pandemic COVID-19 started spreading around Milan. It was the beginning of March: nobody was still clear about the precautions to employ. While the virus was threatening and quarantine was the promise, worried people moved by fear started robbing supermarkets until exploding. The new theatres of life, the houses, have been prepared for something that wasn’t correctly perceived nor codified. That’s when we started wondering.
"We are prisoners, there is only one slit left. It goes through lips, teeth, tongue, and becomes Greed. It swallows everything: organic materials, dead animals, fruits robbed from the trees, vegetables torn from the ground. It is the natural course of life, or so it seems. Human cells crave other cells, our organism calls for other organisms, it wants flora, demands fauna. All tiny single spheres or a whole immense sphere, which encompasses everything, expanding. But the infinite is not for us, and in its finitude mankind swallows, absorbs further, reproduces, overflows and lastly invades. The Stop falls silent and impetuous upon us.
A new Ice Age runs us over, but it does not freeze, it kicks. We take a step back, then another and yet another one. The man withdraws, perceptions that do not belong to us begin to hit the new voids. We give up our space, we submit to biology, vitamins, antibodies. Moss proliferates under our soles, green microbes penetrate our locks, colonize our nest. We are now breeding ground. Our surrender is the mirror for the return of everything that grows. The Earth recaptures the places of its memory, awaits a propitious shadow to chase evil, to uproot it. To ban us. Our parenthesis reabsorbs us as we turn our gaze towards the darkness of the cave. Holed up, we just have to feed on our nemesis. Meanwhile, the shore of that living thing called nature, pushes us further and further, more and more crushed, more and more harmless. In reply."