Nature failure is inevitable,
we can only face it.
‘Are They Rocks or Clouds?’ addresses the history of hydrogeological events in the Dolomite mountains and, more broadly, how our cultural memories of such incidents are shaped. The work explores how human habitation persists in locations that have established patterns of landslides, floods, and other such possible catastrophes and therefore comprises a blend of research and archival images, texts, and recent photographs woven together to address the themes of Destruction, Protection, Experience, Representation and Resilience in areas with centuries-long cycles of human vulnerability in the face of natural disasters. ‘Are They Rocks or Clouds?’ balances information, history and visual pleasure as the reader is asked to confront the risks we take, as humans, in our effort to live comfortably while also pushing the limits of how we interact with the natural world.
- Lesley A. Martin, The Dummy Photobook Prize, Cortona On The Move, 2018
The project started researching a catastrophe which might happen in the future and that, according to geological studies and the theory of return periods, will happen in 50 years from now. The event that is supposed to happen again in the future is the one occurred in 1966. The estimated damages will be 2 or 3 times higher. The images rhythm is determined by keywords as the mountain as metaphor is poetry while the mountain recognized as a real source of danger alludes to the documentary, for which evidence is to be mounted to account for the monitoring of its moving, or testimonies to be gathered after an accident or a catastrophe. - Taco Hidde Bakker, Are They Documents or Poems?
Are They Rocks or Clouds? is a multifaceted series of photographs that benefits from the indeterminacy that, on the one hand, underpins poetry and, on the other, is the boundary of science, all without succumbing to the ambiguity of the one or the presumption of the other, because, to cite the science historian D. Graham Burnett, “conclusions should, as a rule, be treated with suspicion. - Raffaele Vertaldi, Domus 1034
‘Are They Rocks or Clouds?’ is published by Fw:Books and OTM.
The photobook blends images and text; are included three essays and a Coda.
Essays:
Taco Hidde Bakker (Writer and curator), Are They Documents or Poems?
Emiliano Oddone (Geologist), The Gravity of Beauty
Annibale Salsa (Anthropologist), The Knowledge Defect
Selected writings:
ASX American Suburb X - Essay by Eugenie Shinkle & Sunil Shah
GUP Magazine - Book review by Tim van Dijk
Il Post, Sono rocce o nuvole? - Article by Alessia Mutti
Vogue - Interview by Chiara Bardelli Nonino
Exhibitions:
Are They Rocks or Clouds?, solo show, curated by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva (Bucharest, ro, 2023)
Earthlings, Atelier Néerlandais, curated by Jenny Smets (Paris, fr, 2021)
Not only history, but our memories, curated by Carlo Sala, Podbielski Contemporary (Milan, it, 2020)
Sguardo Lucido, Fotohof, curated by Andrew Phelps and Herman Seidl (Salzburg, at, 2019)
Are They Rocks or Clouds?, Cortona On The Move, curated by Arianna Rinaldo (Cortona, it, 2019)
F4 Fondazione Francesco Fabbri, curated by Carlo Sala (it, 2019)
Looking On – MAR Ravenna, curated by Giulia Ticozzi and Osservatorio Fotografico (it, 2019)
Emerging Talents, Mattatio, Roma, curated by Arianna Catania and Sarah Carlet (it, 2018-2019)
Giovane Fotografia Italiana, Fotografia Europea Reggio Emilia, curated by Daniele De Luigi (it,2018)
Awards:
Premio Graziadei VII Edition, Special Mention, (2020, it)
Prix du Livre, Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards, Finalist (2020, fr)
Premio Marco Bastianelli (2020, it)
Cortona On The Move Book Dummy Award (2018)
Premio Giovane Fotografia Italiana, FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA – Reggio Emilia (2018, it)
Unseen Dummy Award 2017 e La Fàbrica – Photo London Book Dummy Award, Shortlisted (2018, es-uk)
(working title)
2015-2024
The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide.
The project is supported by FMAV - Fondazione Modena Arti Visive with UGM Umetnostna galerija Maribor and a series of project partners including CAP - Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Saint-Fons (France), Fotodok, Utrecht (The Netherlands), FOMU - Fotomuseum Antwerp (Belgium), FRB - Foundation for Biodiversity Research, Paris (France), Fw:Books, La Triennale, Milano and Ghella.
Bridges are Beautiful (working title) is a research project that takes the Natura 2000 network as a reference for researching the place that human beings occupy within nature.
This network is a series of ecological corridors promoted by the European Union, created to preserve fauna, flora and biodiversity. It is a transnational communication system that goes beyond the border policies of each state, and puts ecological logic first. Bridges are some of the most important infrastructures in the network, since they make it easier for animals to overcome architectural barriers such as motorways and roads. At the same time, multiple fences and security cameras monitor and follow their movements, casting doubt on their apparent freedom of movement. The series includes landscape views of natural spaces and photographs of viaducts and other constructions, as well as snapshots of animals captured by surveillance cameras installed by researchers.
This work explores the tensions that emerge from the power that human beings try to exert over nature. To do so, the author analyses the contradictory relationships between infrastructure construction, policies and freedom of movement, and nature conservation.
Awards
Italian Council, Ministery of Culture (2023, IT)
C/O Berlin Talent Award, shortlisted (2021, DE)
Gabriele Basilico - Prize in Architecture and Landscape Photography, shortlisted (2019, IT)
Docking Station, Artist residency, Amsterdam (2018, NL)
Selected writings
Marina Caneve, Ponti, migrazioni, una sola terra | Bridges, Migrations, One Land, in Esili e esodi | Exiles and Exoduses, «Vesper» No. 4, 2021
Previous Exhibitions
Eyes on tomorrow, Giovane Fotografia Italiana nel Mondo, Algeri (2022, DZ)
’Nature Future’, curated by Collectif Fetart, Prague, Berlin, Stuttgart (2022, CZ, DE)
GETXOPHOTO ‘To Share’ curated by Jon Uriarte (2021, ES)
La Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione Venezia, Up Marghera On Stage (2016, IT)
- Simona Antonacci
This project is made for Atlante Sapienza_22 - Collezione Fotografia MAXXI Architettura
Entre chien et loup is common expression used nowadays in the French language, which has existed since the 7th century in the Latin form infra horam vespertinam, inter canem et lupum; it draws that moment in the day when the light declines and we may not be able to distinguish a dog from a wolf. This image triggered my imagination and my fascination for the structures of knowledge; the resulting series comes from the desire to re-discuss the ways in which we create the cultural memory of the Mountain. For doing that I confronted myself, rather than with a single stereotyped image, with the multiple stereotypes of the image of the mountain.
The first stereotype questioned was suggested by the title of the exhibition for which the work was made: What a Fantastic World Here! A Contemporary Gaze at the Museomontagna Archives. This sentence represents Heidi's bucolic stereotype of the mountain, which however soon reveals itself in contrast with the multitude of others.
I would define Entre chien et loup as a stratification of different experiences, where I built a sort of path of entrances, windows, metaphorical peepholes, which gradually led the viewer from one stereotype to another. The images and the installation of the work force us to move in an exploratory way through misunderstandings, confirmations and epiphanies, weaving a web of relationships between disciplines and ways of looking, at times inverting and confusing the roles between archive and landscape, construction and artifact, scientific and imaginary.
Furthermore, Entre chien et loup is a project animated by a question about the images through which we construct our idea of the mountain, which is not a mountain in itself but is a symbol of something extremely stereotyped. To address the question, I wanted not only to work in the archive of the Mountain Museum, but also to choose a place where to go. Through a peregrination of research I identified Mount Cervino as an incubator of almost all the stereotypes I had discovered. The Matterhorn has become a mountain symbol of all mountains as, ironically, is confirmed by the large number of mountains around the world called “the Cervino of…”.
The curator Giangavino Pazzola writes: "Passing from archive pictures to superimposed meanings, her work speaks of a breakdown in knowledge, a perceptive catastrophe, that is reflected in the dispersal of certainties”.
My aim was to explore the Mountains with a gaze as open as possible in order to introduce themes and elements to the contemporary discussion on the mountain; themes which often are taboo in many contexts: the ascension, the fall, the game, the death, the bucolic, the depopulation, the heroes.. “The inside and the outside, the true and the false, the artificial and the natural, the vernacular and the scientific, the cultural and the popular, and the real and the pretence are then discussed again and resignified in a single environmental installation that seems as mocking as it is subtle. Mixing all the material types, it redefines an undeclared geography inhabited by a new (and perhaps highly unlikely) ethnography, telling us of a world as fantastic as it is ambiguous, one that we have probably visited but that now seems different.”
Entre chien et loup is a body of work made of interferences, aimed at undermining our, my, certainties regarding a landscape so iconic that it has almost become an image of itself.
Monopoli – Manifesto frammentario della città di Venezia
Venice, 2013 (ongoing)
“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Caneve’s research is a reflection on a unicum, Venezia, which also is a representation of all the world’s civilizations, or at least of those that found their form in more or less recent times.
In this work the inhabited scenes relate to the city and the use made of it. The threats are the market, the productive, the political and economical reasons that violate the natural context in which Venice arose and developed, mortifying its right to be a city.
This project focuses on the image of the city, which is more often image of the idea of itself, playing what we remember about Venice and the actual condition of the city itself. In the work playful images are displayed in juxtaposition with Venice’s vulnerability due to economical and climate issues, as for instance the depopulation, the large ships, the tourism, the sale of historical assets and last but not least the water level growth.
The work is about Venice but not only about Venice: the attempt is rather to explore the artist’s interested in the doom, the future and the vulnerability of our cities and history. Venice - referring again to Calvino - remains only one example. And perhaps, using it as an example, we have already lost it ...
Fragmentary Manifesto of the city of Venice
Love
Mechanical Mobility
Scenic Machine
Excitement
Utopia
Well-being
Goods
Wealth
Boredom
Disgust
Dystopia
Misery
Repetition
Removal
Escape
Prison
Tourism
Mass
Solitude
Fairy
Tale
Trap
The sectors of a city are, at a certain level, decipherable. (Guy Debord)
This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty — this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice