AVANGUARDIE VERDI
To discuss about the world, we have to speak the same language…
The green avant-gardes communicate with their eyes to look ahead at the future
Avanguardie Verdi is a project born by the desire of a common and concrete action against the climate crisis.The objective of the project is to raise environmental awareness through a universally spoken language: art.
THE MATERICIST MANIFESTO by AVANGUARDIE VERDI
Matter is a primigenial and totalizing concept: everything that exists, the being, is matter; anything that doesn’t, the non-being, is nothingness.
There is matter without a body – free and impalpable – and matter with a body. There is organic matter in activity – alive and perishable – and inorganic matter in inactivity.
Everything that has been generated and that exists is matter and more cannot be created nor destroyed. Hence, we must be careful and take care of the transformations and metamorphoses of the matter that exists and that we have active power of mutation on.
Matter is a unifying and interactive concept: there are no borders between corporeal and incorporeal matter, with or without a body. The closer we approach the limits of surfaces, the interfaces of a body with the external reality, the more the borders become blended and blurry, revealing the interaction with other bodily or non-bodily matter.
From the microbes on our skin to our cells’ permeable films, there are no barriers and there is no Self. Indeed, if the identity of an individual is outlined by the borders of its “materic” substance, and these are in a constant state of mutation because of the incessant interaction and adaptation to the external matter, then the Self cannot be an independent, defined entity, but rather an undefined one, which is interfusing with the surrounding matter, existing only in interaction with such.
The borders which define a body of organic matter are nothing but deceptions: results of an approximation and resulting in distorted perceptions.
We, as mankind, are matter and are fused in matter. We are not indivisible individuals, but organic aggregates of units of matter, in constant mutation and movement.
We are the air we breath, the food we eat, the sounds we hear. All of this, either corporeal or incorporeal, is mobile matter that interacts and shapes our being: blended definition, mutable conformation of a “materic” aggregation.
With our manifesto:
- We proclaim the reevaluation of matter, organic and inorganic, recognizing its intrinsic value over the extrinsic function;
- We recognize nature as matter in time, manifesting itself in circular mutations through metamorphosis and movement;
- We recognize ourselves as matter, elements of an homogeneous material system, flowing within its movements and cycles;
- We accept, embrace and actively engage in the cyclic processes of matter, driving new cycles and avoiding the deviation of those already existing;
- We condemn a linear and consumeristic relation with matter;
- We condemn waste. Both as trash – devalued matter – as well as repulsion and refusal – indifference – of one’s own responsibility towards matter;
- We condemn and face climate change as a consequence of the anthropogenic deviation of matter from its natural cycles;
- We proclaim our action to oppose the systematic deviation of the cycles of matter, of which we are responsible, and our action to mend the effects of it;
- We proclaim the transition from a materialistic society towards a “matericist” one, which minds and appreciates the corporeal and incorporeal worth of matter, accepting its mutations and its cycles;
- We prize and practice the physical and metaphorical value of matter through art, meant as recognition, enlightenment and sublimation of such.
Our manifesto stands against:
- Consumerist societies which classify matter in two main categories: good for its own service or trash;
- Globalized and globalizing societies which generalize and categorize reality into models that do not grasp the complexity of the being;
- Technicist societies which are circumscribed to the sole sphere of sciences, and which consider matter in its mere objective value, unable to see its transcendent worth;
- Individualist societies, unaware or aware of not being mindful of the interdependence and interconnection of each component in the system they are set in, as well as the repercussions that each one of them has on the other;
- Digitalised societies which make use and depend on technologies without knowing their functioning mechanisms, considering their incorporeity as intelligence but not recognising the corporeality of the matter they are generated from;
- Societies which are scared of their own carnality, which consider the evidence of corporeal processes indecorous, and which hide to themselves their own mortality, refusing their being nature and being matter;
- Societies which are unconscious of their own limits and which are unaware of their own essential needs and necessities.
Our manifesto fosters a sustainable system, which is a system that takes care of matter and takes part in its cycles organically. The current human system has set a linear and inorganic relation with matter, not a cyclic one in harmony with natural processes.
Sustainability is an intrinsic characteristic to the way of being of matter, hence it is to the way of Being of humans as well, but it is not intrinsic to the way of Living of humans. This displacement has originated from human alienation from matter and material mutations. This displacement is the origin of the climate crisis.
The blossoming of spirit in the body, the rooting of self-conscience in organic matter, has distanced mankind from the materiality of its body. Recognizing, although, that there is no such thing as the self’s bordering films, that selves are subparts of a bigger Self, that self-consciousness is incorporeal matter fused with corporeal matter, humanity cannot avoid the identification of its matter with its spirit, as one is the upsurge or the motor of the other.
This manifesto, canceling the alienation between matter and spirit, humans and nature, aims to lead towards an identification of “materic” sustainability with human sustainability. The cause and the future consequences of the climate crisis are presently demonstrating the discrepancy between mankind, matter and nature.
This manifesto aims to stimulate new reflections on the role humanity is playing on the planet as “materic” dimension, to promote new languages between the human and natural parts. Only through such communication would mankind be able to evolve as organic matter and would avoid a return to the inorganic, meaning extinction.
AND LIGHT WAS. THE ENLIGHTENED MATTER
The exhibition is composed of three different sections: MATTER, HUMAN and SUSTAINABILITY. A journey of discovery of matter and of the Self, leading to the realisation of their correspondence.
AND LIGHT WAS represents the re-evaluation of matter, that the observer processes in the course of the exhibition. It is the same re-evaluation that humankind needs to elaborate for the survival and the evolution of the species.
THE ENLIGHTENED MATTER is an image that invites us to appreciate the transcendence of matter and to see the reality and the environment around us as pieces of art, as the matter of which we are a part of has an existential value in all its forms.
MATTER
In the first section matter is broken down in its essence, form and transformation.
The artworks themselves become testimonies of the value of matter and of the multiplicity of forms that this can take: each artwork is the result of the transformative process of other matter. This section investigates the dichotomy between organic (living) and inorganic (lifeless) matter and their interaction, as well as the corporeal or incorporeal form that it can potentially assume. Many of the works in MATTER harmonize corporeal matter (metals, fabrics and pigments) with incorporeal matter (light, sounds and the surrounding environment). Thus, from the artistic matter exposed in the exhibition, we understand a disconcerting concept: even what we do not visually perceive exists and is matter, whereas what we perceive is only a partial intuition of reality. In fact, matter constantly transforms and deforms. It follows a continuous cycle that makes it impossible to define its borders. From this principle, which is also applicable to human matter, we can deduce the non-existence of an individual Self. In other terms, the limit of a Self cannot be defined, as a human is a continuous, interchangeable mutation of organic matter. Precisely because of this characteristic of human matter, we tend to have a reduced perception of the whole (Matter) and of ourselves as part of it.
In the first section, hence, we deal with the totalizing character of matter. If matter is the whole, each of its forms has an intrinsic value. The works exhibited in MATTER are a sublime expression of this.
HUMAN
The second section focuses, instead, on the distance and aversion that mankind has set between itself and matter, that is the alienation from its material nature and the refusal of its value. Through HUMAN, an approximate and discriminating term to indicate the human matter, this section aims to highlight the consequences of a distorted and self-centered view (which conceives an individual self), rather than an overall and totalizing Self, identified with Matter. Many works in this section condemn the human processes of deviation of natural material cycles, such as deforestation, excessive consumption, pollution. These all fall in the category of exploitation of matter – considered exclusively as a “resource” – and in the production of use-less matter – defined as “waste” – by human systems.
The section MAN is in antithesis with the section MATTER, reflecting an anthropocentric perspective of reality and the human alienation from its material essence. At the roots of these deviations are feelings of frustration and upset. These arise from the realization of having a reduced cognition of reality, and the lack of control over it. Such feelings collide with the instinct of self-preservation, which instead pushes the survival of the individual self and human supremacy over the surrounding environment. This mechanism therefore leads to the establishment of a hierarchy of matter, which places the individual before the rest, to fulfill its interest as a single entity rather than as an interdependent one.
In the section MAN, various interpretations of the relationship between man and matter are proposed, which emphasize the contradiction of the human instinct for self-preservation. In order to develop, the species ends up by deteriorating matter and therefore its very substance.
SUSTAINABILITY
In the last section, an alternative to the deterioration of matter is proposed: recognizing the sustainability of the material as one’s own.
Natural cycles are the manifestation of material sustainability, examples of circular processes are the hydrological cycle (of water), the lithogenetic cycle (of rocks), the nutrient cycle of nitrogen and phosphorus (soil minerals). They stabilize the balance of entire ecosystems. The current system, however, has not been based on this circular trend and instead pursues a linear development.This skips the last phase of renewal and reintegration of matter within the circle, leaving the cycle open. An example is the anthropocentric perspective of consumption, which is the exploitation of matter in a linear way and the appreciation of it in a single form, impling the discard of what does not satisfy its own interest. If we were to follow this view, some of the works exhibited in SUSTAINABILITY should not have existed, as the matter that constitutes them is waste material, previously considered worthless. The irony behind this perspective, blind to the beauty of matter and its potential, imposes the necessity to rectify the difference between material and materic (from Italian “materico”) . The term “material”, in fact, imposes a quality of functionality of the matter in favor of man. Instead, it is the term “materic”, used to describe works of art with an intrinsic value, which appreciates the deepest essence of matter, without an end of utility for man. Sustainability is therefore an intrinsic characteristic of matter, but not of the human way of existing. The works in the section SUSTAINABILITY that regenerate and sublimate the otherwise rejected material reinforce the thought according to which the human species – in order to sustain and self-preserve itself – must make its own the sustainability and circularity of the material it is made of.
