A series of five collages about fire in the Parco dell’Olivo, a collection of olive groves on the slopes of the Mainarde mountains near Venafro in the Italian region of Molise.
As the climate crisis increases, the Mediterranean’s oldest olive groves have become victims of flash fires. These groves, on the slopes of the Mainarde mountains, are part of the ancient town of Venafro, in Italy’s youngest region, Molise. In the Roman era they were written about by Marco Porcio Catone and celebrated by Horace, who considered the ‘green berry of Venafro’ to be superior to all others. The trees are a symbol of peace, harmony, growth, rebirth, friendship and longevity. They contribute to the preservation of natural resources and biodiversity and are active agents in combating global warming and desertification.
The series of collages Ik Ben Montagna form a visual essay, made in 2018-19 in direct response to the spontaneous combustion that caused flash fires and the rapid burning of thousand-year old olive trees. Fires equivalent to infernos raged across countries around the world, resulting in the deaths of multiple humans, animals, insects and birds.
Environmental destruction is no longer a vague possibility, but a real and unpredictable force moving at an accelerating rate of change that deepens and extends our evolving state of living with uncertainty. Whether house fires, forest fires or wildfires, in environments that are man-made and as-yet-not-touched-by-man, a new urgency is amongst us and our personal and ecological landscapes are changing irrevocably.
The most pressing role for each of us is how to go beyond the individual, to re-consider fire, an element at once beautiful and terrifying in its ability to simultaneously entrance and destroy, to create new scenarios. In evolving frictions and complex entanglements, how can attention to the reparative amongst species and beings inform new and fruitful ways of being?