THROUGH THE NARRATION OF SLOW SPATIAL METAMORPHOSES.
DECENTRALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN ECOLOGICAL BREAKDOWNS THE DECENTRALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN ECOLOGICAL BREAKDOWNS SHIILA INFRICCIOLI
SHIILA
INFRICCIOLI THE
THE DECENTRALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT OF TIME IN ECOLOGICAL BREAKDOWNS THROUGH THE NARRATION OF SLOW SPATIAL METAMORPHOSES
SHIILA INFRICCIOLI
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INTRODUCTION
ECOLOGICAL VIOLENCE THROUGH MEANS OF SILENT REPRESENTATION
METAMORPHOSIS 1: OWNERSHIP AND INDEPENDENCE
METAMORPHOSIS 2: FROM SEEDS TO LANDSCAPES
METAMORPHOSIS 3: AGENCIES OF DISRUPTION
HOW TO TURN A DEADLY MATTER INTO AN ALIVE CONSCIOUSNESS? INDEX
ECOSYSTEM IMBALANCES AS OPPORTUNITIES
TO RETHINK LONG-TERM HUMAN-FOREST COEXISTENCE.
FOREST NURSERY: THE SCHOOL OF THE TREES
THE IDEALIZATION OF THE LANDSCAPE, RURAL POPULATION AND CLIMATE OUTBREAKES.
SPRUCE ECONOMIES: MUTATION OVER TIME AND RESOURCE SHORTAGES
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ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTERVIEWS
“But what happens when we are unsighted, when what extends before us—in the space and time that we most deeply inhabit—remains invisible? How, indeed, are we to act ethically toward human and biotic communities that lie beyond our sensory ken? […] Such questions have profound consequences for the apprehension of slow violence, whether on a cellular or a transnational scale.”
(Nixon, 2013, p. 15)
Contrary to what the static nature of Alpine scenery portraits or picture postcards might suggest, moun tainous landscapes are hidden, complex, and unex plored worlds, slowly but perpetually transforming over time. Organic matter is not stationary by nature; nothing remains the same, not even the mountains, the great boulders, the valleys. Neither the forests, as imaginative redemption places that inspire a sense of relative eternity, compressing and expanding in times far longer than human life, so that their becoming is almost imperceptible to the eyes of a single individ ual.
Metamorphosis is a principle embedded in forests ecosystems and the foundational aspect of their vital ity. As the result of the collaboration of countless mi cro-organisms, forests are profoundly and constantly active, revealing the infliction of ecological violence through insidious acts of contamination, manifesting themselves in their resistant aliveness, in a continu ous state of becoming. Nevertheless, since the increase of Europeans’ knowledge of materials and their properties, extrac tive practices have neglected ecosystems dynamisms, unhearing the voices of nonhumans, relegating them to the categories of resources for investment, with alienation, that¹ is, the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. (Tsing, 2021, p. 5)
INTRODUCTION
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Understanding the violence embedded in ecological breakdowns and acknowledging the slowness of their becoming requires considering a temporal scale that goes far beyond a singular human lifespan: to think of the forest as an active metamorphic space means to engage with a decentralized temporal paradigm. The notion of decentralized time can be explained through the concept of foresight that applies to the figure of the forestry technician. During an interview with Ilario Cavada, the forestry technician of Val di Fiemme (IT), I realized that forests’ metamorphoses manifest beyond what a singular human life can observe.
“This concept of time is the concept to which our work as foresters is most closely linked, and often no one under stands because by now everyone is accustomed to maximum speed, to the computer, to an immediate response, to imme diate news. I am working not to see the effects myself but for my future colleagues in 100 years. We have to have a very developed concept of foresight, which is not needed in many other professions.” (Cavada, 2022)
Decentralized time adaptation happens precisely be cause to be in contact with the forest means to timely think as the forest, whose, as we will see, ecological metamorphoses are happening with much-delayed ef fects. Therefore, as the forester tries to apply foresight to see what will be beyond him, to engage with the forest’s current ecological state, we need to pay attention to “what extends before us.” (Nixon, 2013, p.15) In this optic, contextualizing the historical roots
of exploitation practices could help unfold the multi-layered, slow violence2 (Rob Nixon, 2013) of extractive narratives in ways that uncover ecolog ical disturbances as single, destructive, and direct cause-effect events.
To question the very womb of humans’ cultural prac tices at the roots of ecosystem breakdowns is to raise the attention of nonhumans agencies as unpredict able forces. To shift the subjectivity of these stories and reveal profoundly unfamiliar perspectives is a key to reflecting on the temporal anthropocentrism that characterizes sustainable development narra tives, where the focus is always projected into the future, to design production processes that optimize the emerging scarcity of natural resources instead of questioning the violence of the ideological seeds that were planted centuries of years ago. The decay of natural resources and environmental disruptions are present entities that will eventually and dramatically be part of our near future, but are intrinsically rooted in our past. In Nixon’s (2013, p. 3) words, “we need to account for how the temporal dispersion of slow violence affects how we perceive and respond to […] environmental calamities”, by revealing the stories of ecosystems’ silent aliveness and resistance.
Following the stories engraved inside the trees of Val di Fiemme (IT), I will unfold a ramification of terrain events that happened over centuries, where every story has a single scale, neatly nestled in the current forest substratum. Like every branch, every story has a single scale, neatly nestled in the current forest
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substratum. Like every branch, every event is con stantly evolving and growing into new ramifications, even at this moment, attached to a multi-dimension al, specific, and constantly evolving metamorphic system.
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ECOLOGICAL VIOLENCE THROUGH MEANS OF SILENT REPRESENTATION
“Our forests are not natural. They are forests that man has managed for centuries; we have human management of the wood. Humans started using and planting the forest thousands of years ago; it is like a form of domesticated animal.”
(Bellù, 202
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On the outskirts of northern Italy, almost at the border with Austria, Fiemme Valley extends on a west-east axis along the waters of the Avisio river. Surrounded by the impressive Dolomites mountains ranges, where the highest peak arises up to 2847 m (Peak d’Asta), the Valley is covered by villages, meadows, pastures, and forests teeming with conifers, shrubs, and undergrowth nestle. The trees surround ing Fiemme Valley belong almost exclusively to the Magnificent Community of Fiemme, which currently owns 20,000 hectares of forests.
This circumscribed woodland, where the presence of humans has been perpetual and instituted by the same social group, which identifies itself through well-documented rituals, cultural practices, and traditions, is a critical case study to unfold slow eco-political metamorphoses as the results of the millennial cohabiting of humans and forest through a decentralized time paradigm. However, before enter ing the complexity of these becomings, I first need to engage with the very representational aspect of this ecological space. The seemingly wild scenery of the Dolomites is a clear example of how the image of the natural world operates on multiple layers of complex ity, including aesthetics, infrastructures, and politics. From a structural point of view, Fiemme Valley’s forest can be considered designed for exploitation as part of an infrastructure of the landscape, whose wild aesthetics promoted by mass tourism narratives are attempting to bury the memory of ecological violence permeated over millennia.
To engage with this representational aspect with out falling into simplistic dichotomies such as the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’, I will use the distinction between the terms ‘woodland’ and ‘forest’ to uncover the complexities of the agencies that are common ly related to ‘tree covered’ environments. While woodlands are by definition a growth and extension of woods that are controlled, managed, and culti vated by humans, the forest is usually defined as an area of wildland, not controlled by humans, in which the vegetation grows spontaneously and consists of herbaceous plants, bushes, and in particular tall trees. The forest, precisely because of its wild nature and its distance from human control, has always exercised a particular fascination in the collective imagination: the word itself, in its very etymological meaning, derives from the Latin ‘foris,’ which means ‘outside,’ and ‘forestis silva’ ‘forest outside the fence,’ defin ing a place which is ‘outside the built-up area,’ and therefore solitary and wild. In the common imagina tion, the forest is seen as a foreign space, mysterious, disconnected from what happens in the city, a hardly civilized space.
Humans’ presence and control agency are precisely what seem to differentiate an area that can be con sidered ‘wild’ and therefore ‘natural’ from a domes ticated and cultivated one. However, there is a liquid boundary between these definitions, made of nuances and complexities, variously discussed but not yet been solved by semantics or legislation. Moreover, the cul tural perception of these environments is even more blurred by the difficulty of a human eye to perceive
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a cultivated forest from a seemingly wild one. This grey area and gap of perception are at the basis of the instrumentalization of the image of the natural oper ated by the narratives of massive touristic attractions, which often describe these landscapes as places to occupy to enjoy rituals of redemption from the artifi ciality of the city.
Ecological violence also operates through means of this cultural perception, where the landscape’s picturesque aesthetics and the natural narratives neglect stories, vicissitudes, and aliveness in the name of economic interests. Because of this well-succed ed strategy, the stories of these landscapes are not spoken, and the forests are still considered leisure spaces rather than places embedded with memories. This romanticized image, which intends to attract an external audience by portraying the mountain as a recreational space, inevitably leads to a lack of awareness and care towards the forest as a com plex metamorphic space that carries the wounds of centuries of human activity, “leading to an emptying out of traditions, cultures, knowledges which are then also reflected in the maintenance of the territory from both an environmental and a management point of view.” (Giacomuzzi, 2022)
Mass tourism is not directly linked to the material ex ploitation of the forest more than it is to the degrada tion of its soil, but it is certainly helpful to understand how representational leaps and extractive violence are two sides of the same coin. Making the landscape
accessible to the masses is a concept that was first established during Fascist propaganda. The imagery of the natural landscape and its wilderness narratives started to circulate as a strategy to commercialize the landscape in the name of economic development. In order to circulate images that would attract the masses to consume the landscape, the Italian tourism agency adopted ‘Le Vie d’Italia’ as its official organ, “promoting the basic approach to tourism promo tion: turning places into commodities and convincing potential consumers of their beauty.” (Armiero, 2011, p. 101)
‘It will be necessary to clear the land of the coppices that cover it where necessary to see how many tall trees there are, layout convenient paths, and even have the courage to start abundant plantations of ornamental trees, especially conifers of the varieties favored by the villas.’ (Bertarelli quoted in Armiero, 2011, p. 102)
Today, the Valley’s forests are crisscrossed by more than 200 km of footpaths, together with the val ley-floor cycle path and the ski facilities. The seasonal offer is also enriched by exceptional events such as the ‘Marcialonga’ (long march), a famous interna tional Nordic skiing competition that attracts 30,000 visitors and generates an income of almost 8 million euros. (Martellozzo, 2020, p. 45)
It is precisely when humans have access to the landscape, when its vegetation begins to be modified, tread on, and uprooted to adapt to the creation of
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infrastructures, the forest can no longer be considered something distant from humanity. The accessibility that the human has in the space, and sometimes the violence and the magnitude with which this agency manifests itself, initiates slow, violent, and silent met amorphoses. Nevertheless, accessibility to resources is not something equal; its redefinition happened throughout history through inclusion\exclusion pro cesses. To become an infrastructure where power is centralized, forest resources management has under gone a process of marginalization of all the uses that conflicted with the idea of the forest as a productive and exploitable space. Besides the folk idea of being ‘outside society,’ the forest is precisely a constructed socio-ecological space whose characteristics are mor phed by specific societal power structures.
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METAMORPHOSIS 1:
OWNERSHIP AND
The destructive effects of extractive economies are frequently discussed as results of modern-industri al capitalism cycles, but the standardization of the Fiemme Valley’s forest and its slow transformation into a production space goes far back in history. Fiemme’s Valley has always been a territory deeply marked in its culture and economic vicissitudes by the flow of raw materials, where economic ties have bound the Tyrol to other parts of Europe since at least Roman times. (Cole and Wolf, 1999, p. 168) There fore, to understand the economic importance of forest resources in the past, it is essential to start from a broader time scale. The first metamorphosis is enact ed by human agency and occurs through the defini tion of the concept of privilege linked to the accessi bility to forest resources. However, to think of being able to tackle the complexity of millenary ecological and social transformations that modified the access to Fiemme Valley’s forest resources is not the aim of the theorization of this metamorphosis, but rather to outline the complex and subtle establishment of societal power structures.
“Community forestry has a long tradition in Italy, dating back to the beginning of this millenni um.”(Morandini, 1996, p.1) According to historical references to the Alpine landscape and its resource management forms, communities based on the com mon need to share the forest and thus on collective use were present throughout the mountain territory,
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INDEPENDENCE
characterized by agro-forestry-pastoral economies. However, over time, the majority of the original collective premises of these communities have been profoundly modified. In Italy, “political changes made it possible for elites to redraw the legal and illegal borders in hybrid spaces such as forests and erase any alternative way to access natural resources.” (Armiero quoted in Biasillo and Armiero, 2018, p. 2)
As previously stated, the Magnificent Community of Fiemme currently owns 20,000 hectares of forests in Fiemme Valley. This community is a social formation that already existed 1000 years ago, where it appears as the owner of 12 thousand hectares of forest and 60 million trees. Its autonomy was officially recog nized as early as 1111 by the Bishop-Prince of Trento in a document called the Patti Ghebardini and was repeatedly reaffirmed in the following centuries. The so-called Enrician Privilege of 1314 gave the inhabit ants of Fiemme direct common ownership of their lands, forests, pastures, and all related land use rights, including wood harvesting, grazing, hunting, and fishing. One of the primary goals of the community’s founding was to keep the pasture in question intact and, if possible, to expand it so that each member could receive sustenance from the resources it pro vided, even in the face of severe economic hardship. (Dossi, 2021)
The Magnificent Community of Fiemme was primar ily characterized by a unique system of ownership rights and the use of natural resources. The commu nities brought to light a network of uses and access
rights which, taken as a whole, constituted an alter native way of thinking about nature, where forests were seen as more than the algebraic sum of soil and timber: they were complex ecosystems made up of topsoil, trees, banks, woodlands, livestock, pastures, water, and wild fruits. (Armiero, 2011) In fact, for the inhabitants of Fiemme Valley, the common lands did not only have an economic function but also played an essential role in strengthening community cohe sion and consolidating the original ties between the inhabitants. All the inhabitants could obtain fire wood for cooking and heating in the common woods. Wood could also be cut for domestic use, for example, building or repairing houses or making handcrafted furniture, and for village use. Common woods also produced potash, resin, tannin, and animal bedding. (Bonan, 2016)
Ecological violence is modelled on the political violence enacted on human beings (Ghosh, 2021), by simplifying ecologies and centralizing power over the resources. The scientific standardization of forests in the 18th century, in particular, has its roots in timber management and Venetian markets, both of which had a significant impact on the Fiemme Valley. An example can be traced back to the first legislative provisions approved as early as 1527, under the name ‘Instrumento de li legnami.’ This legislation regulated the collectivity’s access to the forest resources since collective use was the main reason for the forest’s wear and tear. In reality, the Venetian merchants were responsible for the ecological damages due to
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excessive wood extraction. Venetian merchants saw the forest as a “green mine” rather than as an asset to be protected according to ancient customs, anticipat ing and preparing the ground for a modern approach to forestry practices.
The transformation of the commons during the 19th century is a crucial moment in understanding the re-articulation of Fiemme’s community heritage. As the process of centralization of power progressed, the ecology of the forest and its inhabitants were not considered in the vision of the forest as a productive machine. The common use of the forest has been threatened numerous times throughout history, giv ing rise to stories of political power resistance, such as the insurgency that occurred in 1809 in Predazzo (a village in the Fiemme Valley), when peasants protested for the preservation of their autonomy in contrast to the modernization of the state that was taking place in Europe. During this historical era, so cial structures based on the idea of the common prop erty went through a metamorphosis to make room for legal forms of private ownership. In particular, after the annexation of Trentino to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1805, by the decree of 23rd of January 1807, the “Regolanie maggiori e Minori” were abolished and the modern municipality was set up in place. The central aspect of this process involved an organizational transformation that led to the abolition of all legal and institutional competencies of the rural commu nities and their replacement with modern municipal corporations. (Bonan, 2016, pp. 599, 1) However, as
Bonan states (2016, p. 1) “The state intervention did not cause the end of the common institutions but instead caused a general redefinition of who could use these lands and how these lands could be used.” These political processes happened slowly and silently to avoid social turmoil. On the one hand, the law prescribed the cancellation of peasants’ customs, and on the other, it provided communities with an exemption for subsistence purposes. (Biasillo and Armiero, 2018, p. 5) Under these new laws, the mountain forests were considered an asset that the state should preserve to ensure long-term supplies for cities’ needs; this protection was directed against alpine communities who lived close to the forest and exploited the forests to survive. (Whited quoted in Bonan, 2016, p. 591)
Increased control over the rural area and economic and social scale changes affected peasant commu nities, leading to social differences. (Bonan, 2016, p. 599) While management according to a standard policy lasted a long time in Fiemme Valley, and the community is still managed autonomously today, this did not imply equal access to shared resources. Only a small number of families had direct or indirect control over the functioning of local institutions, especially those who, although members of the local community, could interact with political and econom ic structures larger than those of the local village and thus act as intermediaries between the center and the periphery. (Bonan, 2016, p. 601) In this sense, “owner ship and management can be distinguished, but when
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important of which is linked to profit, ownership, even if ‘public,’ becomes essentially private.” (inter view to Stefano Rodot by Sara Farolfi quoted in Salis, 2012, p.5)
No matter how remote or distant a mountain village is or how different its management premises and natives’ ties to their land are, it does not exist in isola tion but maintains contact with other external actors (Cole and Wolf, 1999) and develops links with larger politics and economic interests, increasing damaging practices. When mass timber extraction linked to ma jor external economic interests began, the commons saw their right to access resources taken away from them.
In Trentino, deforestation, caused by the increasing use of wood resources, led to an inevitable degrada tion of the forests, which at the beginning of the 19th century were at their lowest point. This led to the need to establish a faster infrastructure for reforesta tion, favoring the planting of commercially exploita ble species over non-profitable ones, which profound ly influenced the forest’s biological composition. The development of forest management in the name of economic exchange is certainly not the only threat to landscape conservation, but it is undoubtedly “the one that produces the most dramatic and irreversible effects”. (Agnoletti, 2013, p. V)
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2022)
35
SEEDS TO LANDSCAPES
METAMORPHOSIS 2: FROM
“The nursery is like a school for trees, I am like a fir tree nanny”. (Zanetti,
With the introduction of the forest nursery, the forest is translated from a space of production to a space of re-production. Although the forest conditions as a productive space have existed since the 17th century, it could not be considered fully optimized from a production standpoint until the practices of produc ing, multiplying, and planting trees for reforestation were established. At this point, exploitation becomes supported by an infrastructure, allowing for greater and more systematic control over extractive practices. The forest nursery conceptually represents the desire to transform the forest into a proper infrastructure of organized re-production; this transition occurs as a result of the realization that the natural regener ation times of the forest do not correspond to those of mass consumption. The second metamorphosis happens between the agencies of the human and the forest. Starting from the scale of the forest nursery, it explains how the reproductive ritual of artificial tree planting is at the heart of massive landscape modifi cation.
For the Fiemme Valley, Francesco Meguscher, chief inspector of the Tyrolean and Vorarlberg forests, drew up a reforestation project as early as 1831. Some sow ing was done in 1832, and some plantations in 1836. From this period onwards, forest nurseries spread and increased rapidly in number. (Agnoletti, 1998, p. 179) Artificial tree planting, as a form of ecological sim plification in which living beings are converted into resources (Tsing quoted in Martellozzo, 2021, p. 436), is a common practice in Fiemme’s Valley, still obser-
vable today. The practices performed in the forest nursery are closely linked to the passage of the seasons. While speeding up and multiplying plants in numbers, hu mans are forced to act according to the climatic and environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of the seedling. The re-production process begins in autumn when the seeds to be planted are collected from the cones of the trees. The cones are harvested in autumn because that is the season when they are mature; the years are not always fruitful; if pollination does not occur, the seeds are not fertile. The seeds are planted in the first area of the nursery: the seedbed. Here they will remain for two years, in their first growth phase. The second area is called the planter. In the transitional phase between these two areas, a sorting process occurs: only the most ‘beautiful’ seed lings are saved, i.e., the straightest and most robust ones. Once selected, the seedlings are placed in the planting house using a machine for four years, during which time the nursery worker will follow their growth by carrying out practices similar to the care of a vegetable garden: removing weeds, giving soil, and water, continuing the selection process.
Once ready, the seedlings are taken to the selected forest areas for reforestation. This process is very delicate; the seedlings have to be harvested in spring before they wake up from winter when they are under ‘anesthesia.’ This is necessary because they are extracted bare-root, and a plant extracted bare-root would die because it is very fragile. The nursery is
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located at an altitude of 1400 meters in favorable climatic conditions so that the seedlings can be planted in time in the forest; otherwise, they would germinate earlier. Once in the reforestation area, the young plants are placed by workers using an ancient technique: they dig a hole and place a stone next to the seedling’s roots, which keeps the soil moist in case of drought. Once placed in the forest, not all plants survive, depending on the water, the fertile soil, and the deer that graze them. There is a difference between a seedling grown in the nursery and one in the forest; the seeds that fall into the soil near the mother plant are much stronger. A seedling grown in the nursery tends to be weaker because it has not had to withstand competition. For this reason, even after being planted in the forest, the seedlings are still looked after for another two years; for example, weeds that could choke them off due to the lack of light are removed. In the autumn, the seedlings that have died are replanted. It is a time-based process, and there is only one month to do this reproductive ritual. Once the tree is 80 years old on average, they are selected and cut for old age, and the trunk is taken to the sawmill of the Valley, where the logs will become semi-finished wooden boards and sold for the construction of houses, interiors, and furnishings. In Fiemme Valley nursery, 90’000 seedlings are current ly produced each year.
The metamorphosis of the forest into a reproductive space happens through a web of human actions: for est keepers, nursery workers, and loggers cultivate,
replant, cut, and assemble the forest landscape. Through the banality of daily actions, they adapt the forest characteristics to the market’s demands, favor ing the regeneration of economically more fruitful species over unproductive ones. Plant after plant, seed after seed, as a repetitive mechanism over the years, until the arboreal composition of the landscape is completely disfigured. In this alienating process, the forest is not seen as an active entity, a living and complex ecosystem that lives according to delicate balances based on its diversity, but is simplified as a passive economic resource at the service of human economies. These rituals of re-production reiterat ed over time have led to the neglect of species that do not conform to the standards of the forest as a productive space, a process of exclusion conceptually similar to the metamorphosis of the collective uses previously described. Currently, the Alpine landscape of north-eastern Italy is a monoculture, which means that it is almost all dominated by spruce trees that tend to be of the same age due to the centuries-old activities of using the forest for timber production. (Agnoletti, 2020, p.357)
In this metamorphosis, the concept of decentralized time in relation to ecological violence takes on one of its highest expressions and can be explained through the slow growth process of the fir tree. From the mo ment the seed germinates, the spruce tree produces a new growth ring each year, increasing the diameter of its trunk as time goes by. It is known that the (eco nomic) maturity of this species, the moment when the trunk diameter reaches the conditions suitable for
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its productive use, is generally reached around 60-70 years, although the cutting rotation can vary, reaching over 120 years. Therefore, the current monoculture of fir trees dates back to reforestations carried out from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th, when favorable market conditions accelerated the preference for this tree species. (Agnoletti, 1998, p.178)
In other words, the current monoculture results from ideological seeds planted up to 120 years ago3 that, with perpetual but slow growth, have led to the stand ardization of the forest as a productive machine until the total metamorphosis of the landscape. Fiemme’s forest is an anthropogenic territory with no secular forests, whose trunk diameters have thinned over time due to continuous logging. (Agnoletti, 2020, pp. 186-187)
The production space of the forest nursery and its surrounding infrastructure are a clear example of how small-scale actions expand, generating a kind of transcendental violence to time and space, with a magnitude that goes beyond human perception, beyond the tangibility of things. In this sense, the unexpected metamorphoses generated by the scale of human actions affect spaces and times that are fright eningly extended beyond what our senses are spon taneously able to observe and acknowledge. These metamorphoses occur through a slow modification of the form of things due to a silent and permanent violence “that is neither spectacular nor
instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive,” (Nixon, 2013, p.2) but not less striking.
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Stages of development of a bark beetle (Ips Typographus)
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“We consider Vaia to be year zero, a watershed between what was before and what will never be the same again, never! An era has changed with Vaia. In the sense that we became aware of management, before we were more gardeners than foresters. A forest environment must be seen in a much broader way, not of the single plant, because you tend to lose the whole. The Storm highlighted some of the weaknesses of Fiemme’s forests. One hundred years ago, when much of the ecological knowledge we have now was not there, the main aim was to make the most money from the spruce, that once fed the whole of Val di Fiemme.” (Cavada, 2022)
51 METAMORPHOSIS 3: AGENCIES OF DISRUPTION
(Ghosh, 2017, p.8)
While the first metamorphosis focuses on the his torical violence embedded in the politics of access to resources, the second hints at how the landscape has been morphed into a monoculture as the result of intensive plantation practices. Yet in the third meta morphosis a new paradigm is established. Ecological disturbances and their slow becoming are removing the mask of extractive violence, changing the aesthet ics, and morphing the forest into a space of resist ance. Nevertheless, neglecting ecosystems dynamism does not eliminate their embedded aliveness; winds, micro-organisms, and vegetation are adaptive, collab orative agencies whose acts of disruption manifest as delayed but non-less accountable effects.
Vaia Storm was an extreme weather event of Atlan tic origin that affected north-eastern Italy, bringing exceptionally high winds and persistent rainfall from October 26, 2018, until October 30. The wind gusts were powerful and catastrophic; the potent hot Sirocco wind, blowing between 100 and 200 km/h for several hours, caused millions of trees to fall to the ground, with the consequent destruction of tens of thousands of hectares of alpine coniferous forests. In Val di Fiemme, millions of trees were blown down, revealing an apocalyptic scenario of destruction. Instead of the typical Alpine landscape, where forests stand dense and dark green in patches, an expanse of crashed, fragmented, and decomposed trees took place.
The winds have found a weakened landscape, de-
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“Who can forget those moments when something that seems inanimate turns out to be vitally, even dangerously alive?”
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prived of its biodiversity; in recent studies, forestry experts found out that the majority of the plants that were blown down by the strong winds during the night of Vaia Storm were mainly spruce spe cies, as forestry practices did not take into account the appropriate planting altitude conditions for the resilience of these plants. Spruce roots are superficial and rarely penetrate the ground deeper than a meter, so they are relatively easy to uproot, especially in extreme climatic conditions. The ideological roots of extractive knowledges have not withstood the power of the winds of resistance, which generate a perfectly consistent image of destruction, that was previously silent in the false beauty of an anthropic landscape.
The anthropocentrism of extractive knowledges failed to acknowledge the complexity behind the vital equi librium of the symbiotic relationships between tree roots and soil. Moreover, the monoculture cultivation created an additional imbalance in the forest’s regen eration mechanisms; as an active and regenerative entity, the forest is inhabited by infinite collaborating organisms. Following destructive events such as a Storm, these entities are called upon to re-establish the balance. A specific ‘balancing’ pathogen corresponds to each species, biologically designed to decompose the tree remains into organic substances. The Typographical bark beetle, together with countless other organisms, is the balancing pathogen of the spruce. Vaia Storm produced the conditions for the beetle to accomplish its biological function to transform the crushed trees
into regenerative material to nourish the forest sub stratum. This insect is nothing more than a vector of Ceratocystis polonica, a fungus whose function is to regenerate dead matter into lively organic soil. The forest substratum, or the so-called Humus, is precise ly an organic matter that supports the emergence of new organisms by sharing and providing vital substances to the roots of young trees and plants. In these processes, the agencies of fungi and beetles are indispensable, as they ensure life for successive generations of living beings through the perpetuation of the biological cycle, even after a catastrophe. This ecological reality would not correspond to damage in a condition of biodiversity; however, as in Fiemme’s Valley entire hectares of forests are sprinkled with the same tree species, the beetle’s presence morphed from an endemic into an epidemic force that ulti mately led to a second massive ecological catastro phe.
“The bark beetle is a beetle called a spruce weakling pest because it is species-specific; it is the most fa mous because it does the most damage. But why does it do the most damage? Because we have too much spruce. The bark beetle has existed for as long as the spruce has existed; in a balanced ecosystem, it does not cause damage, but when there are events that disrupt the forest fabric, it is a foregone conclusion that a bark beetle epidemic will occur.”
(Cavada, 2022)
What precisely turns the beetle action from an en demic silent state to an epidemic force are imbal-
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ances of forest ecosystems. The Storm, bearing down on the monoculture, precisely created the condition for this metamorphosis, as the bark beetle started to decompose dead trees and engrave into the suffer ing ones. This status transformation is particularly interesting as, in a sense, the insect could be seen as the biological indicator of an already damaged and threatened ecosystem.
The name ‘typographical’ refers to the characteristic pattern that the beetle engraves inside the trees. The insect’s engravings damage the phloem, a com plex tissue in the vascular system of higher plants consisting mainly of sieve tubes that function in vital translocation of support and storage. Digging tunnels under the bark, leads the already suffering or damaged tree to decomposition, so its matter can nourish the soil and facilitate the birth of new plants. The process through which the beetle couples allow a spatial understanding of micro-dynamics. Under the bark, the male of the species builds a “room,” then emits pheromones, the chemical compounds through which the beetles communicate. The pheromones can attract up to four females. The females, in turn, dig corridors out of the room, in each of which about fifty eggs are laid. Egg-laying can take up to three weeks, with the former arriving to hatch even before the latter are laid. At birth, the larva feeds on the wood, digging further corridors which branch off from the initial one. The typographical bark beetle uncovers violent truths by digging invisible micro-spaces of resistance into the trees, transforming a seemingly balanced reality into hyper-active landscapes. Read-
ing the engravings that the bark beetle carves in the wood is similar to observing ancient cave paintings; they reveal stories rooted in the past by speaking a nonhuman language. As the ultimate metamorphic agent, the bark beetle digs into the wood and changes its fate, revealing stories of invisible violence perpetu ated over centuries.
One of the effects that bark beetle outbreaks have on wood commodified resources is the Blue-stain fungi; the bark beetle, as the vector of the fungi Ophiostio ma, carries microscopic fungal spores on its armor, which leave blue traces on the wood, visible right down to the end products in Fiemme’s sawmill. The Blue-stain reduces the value of the wood sold for aesthetic purposes, such as interiors and furnish ings. In Fiemme’s Valley, together with Vaia Storm in 2018, the beetle infestation damaged about 7,000 hectares of fir forest and about 3 million cubic meters of timber, producing overall economic damage up to 350 billion euros. (Redazione, 2021) As stains on the conscience of extractive practices, thousands of cubic meters of timber exhibit a silent but flashy change of aesthetic.
Nevertheless, the metamorphic forces of nonhuman agents in Fiemme’s forests are visible at different scales, from the damaged landscape to the bark beetle engravings, to the stains on wood planks. Once again, metamorphoses are characterized by continuous, symbiotic changes, expanding beyond time and space. In this sense, the forest is a space in constant flux where the interweaving of all living elements is most vividly visible.
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HOW TO TURN A DEADLY MATTER INTO AN ALIVE CONSCIOUSNESS?
Exploitative ideologies creep into our present in a slow and inflicting way, but inversely, nonhuman agents are manifesting a series of immediate and striking repercussions, no longer invisible to human consciousness and perception. Looking at ecological disturbances through the past is an opportunity to recognize (Ghosh, 2017) their more complex rami fications, to deepen the understanding of their roots. How do we acknowledge this aliveness to not fall into the mere reiteration of the violence of past practices?
Nonhumans are proposing new radical scenarios and providing a bare ground to build from; they offer us an occasion to re-think responsibility through new temporal and spatial paradigms.
“Climate change involves outsourcing violence on such a vast scale—temporal outsourcing and geo graphical outsourcing. It is the ultimate form of incremental violence as it is shredding our planet’s life-sustaining envelope. Climate change can be mitigated only through a commitment—an ethical, political and imaginative commitment—to safeguard ing people and other life forms that are remote from us in time and space. Such a commitment requires that we deeply value life thirty, fifty, one hundred, one thousand years from now. Countering slow violence requires reimagining responsibility over longer time frames.”
(Rob Nixon, 2013)
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Observing ecological breakdowns through dispersed temporal and spatial metamorphoses means rais ing awareness of unseen realities, realities that are extending beyond our lives and senses. We need to pay attention to microscopic worlds as well as larger truths, to reveal how the violence of the past insin uates itself into the present in obscure ways. Only by acknowledging violence can we eradicate it, give freedom to nonhuman voices, to implement a respon sibility that is conscious of the past, grounded in the present, and enduring in the future.
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FIELD RESEARCH INTERVIEWS
ECOSYSTEM IMBALANCES AS OPPORTUNITIES TO RETHINK LONG-TERM HUMAN-FOREST COEXISTENCE.
Interview with Ilario Cavada, forestry Technician of the Magnificent Community of Fiemme.
Dott. Ilario Cavada, could you introduce yourself and de scribe your role as Forestry Technician of the Magnificent Community of Fiemme?
I am a Forestry Technician who works at the ‘Forestry Agricultural Company’ of the Magnificent Commu nity of Fiemme, that is a sector of the Magnificent Community which is responsible for the forestry her itage of the institution, and covers an area of 20’000 ectares. The Forestry Technician follows, supervise and analyse the woods, year by year, month by month, according to the needs. We are definitely the collec tive property which has the largest forest heritage because we have 20.000 ectares of land, which is half of the terriory of Fiemme Valley, and of these, 12.000 are covered by forests.
In 2018, the exceptionally high winds brought by Storm Vaia affected Fiemme’s forests, destroying and blowing down more than thirteen million trees in the span of a few nights. How did this extreme weather event affected forest manage ment practices?
Vaia Storm for us symbolize the ‘year zero’, a water shed between what was before and what will never be the same again. Never. With Vaia an era has changed. The Storm exposed some of the weaknesses of Fiemme’s woods, that were unintended, but conse-
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quential to a past forestry management of 100 years ago. Years ago, the aim was to cultivate spruce trees, as a single-species and at the same altitude. It was more a cultivation than a forest.
As a matter of fact, in these territories, the imagery of the forest is still linked to the sublime idea of the natural land scape, but technically speaking we are referring to a mono culture. How does one distinguish a primary forest from a monoculture?
First of all, a monoculture is not natural, nature al ways tends to diversify things as much as possible so even at species level it cannot be considered natural. A forest where humans are able to walk is not nat ural, because a natural forest develops vegetation at different heights.
As a consequence of the thousands of trees felled by Vaia Storm, a bark beetle (Ips typographus) epidemic is currently spreading in Fiemme’s forests, causing further economic damages. How does this epidemic acts and when does it occur?
The bark beetle is a parasite that leads the tree to death because it attacks the only vital tissues of the plant in a specific technical concept, wood is a dead tissue that the plant uses to keep itself in balance and to accumulate waste substances.The only living tissues are the phloem and xylem, which are located 2 or 3 millimetres below the bark. The xylem has the function of conducting water and mineral salts to the roots and leaves, then chlorophyll photosynthesis
takes place in the leaves, such as the processing of mineral salts and water, which are redistributed throughout the plant via the phloem. So these tissues are fundamental, they are vital. The bark beetle enters under the bark and starts chewing, by a millimetre, but destroying a pipeline, which are very long pipes, as long as the height of the plant. By destroying these pipelines, the flow of mineral salts is interrupted, and therefore the plant is dead. The typographical bark beetle only attacks spruce trees, is the most famous because it does the most damage. But why it does more damage? Because there’s so much spruce in our woods. In a balanced ecosystem, the bark beetle does not trouble or damage, but when there are events that disrupt the forest tissue, in this specific case Storm Vaia, a bark beetle epidemic is a given. The bark beetle tends to attack weak plants anyway, because plants weakened by a storm, by too much sun, by too much drought, emit ‘suffering hormones’ which are the hormones that the bark beetle uses to attack the plant itself.
Which technologies does the forestry technician use to deal with these epidemic attacks?
We know that suffering plants not only emit hor mones, they also emit a different spectrum of elecro magnetic radiation different from healthy plants, so through sensors that are located on some satellites, we are able to see, to obtain infrared images, in which diseased plants differ from the healthy ones. So we can monitor them and see which plants are suffering before they are attacked by the bark beetle. Therefore
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we can intervene either by protecting the plants as far as possible, because you don’t go into the forest with irrigation or fertiliser, is not allowed, but what we can do is to monitor the evolution, see if there are attacks in that area, or possibly cut the plants before there is an epidemic attack.
How big is the economic impact of the bark beetle outbreak on the timber industry?
We are taking action, to extract dead wood, dry trees, before they become rotten, otherwise the timber would also be of poor quality. The timber does not lose any quality, or rather, it can lose quality for one reason: the bark beetle carries spores of certain fungi on its body, which can ‘blacken’ the wood, so if one wants to have ‘wood colour’ timber, then there is an aesthetic problem. It only creates economic damages because we have to extract a huge amount of timber from the woods, so there is a huge peak in supply and a drop in price, because there is so much volume to sell. Wood is a material that is not durable over time, the current objective is not to extract timber, the pri mary objective is to make the forest more stable, also by extracting timber.
As a result of these environmental imbalances, how has the paradigm of forestry changed? In this particular climate con text, what are the new perspectives regarding forest manage ment and its criticalities?
composed of many more species, not only spruce. In this way, we could obstruct in a basic way, the evolution of the bark beetle because it would have no food. We will plant different species, species that would normally live here, in greater quantities than the spruce, in many areas we already applied it. Species that would normally live here because they find a suitable environment, but which have so far been, I won’t say hindered, but put on the back burner because spruce was more convenient. Up until 50 years ago, birds sorghum, sycamore maple, used to live in these woods but are now rare species, because we have always, or rather our ancestors have always, eliminated them from the forest, because spruce was more fruitful. It was almost a cultivated crop in the past, it was not a forest, it was more an arboriculture. We are going to establish, apply a series of strategies on the new forests, which we will plant now, with the aim of obtaining, in 150 years’, forests that are much more resistant to events such as Vaia Storm. If Vaia were to appear in 150 years’ time it would still create damage, but probably less damage.
What are the expectations for human-forest coexistence in the future?
We intervene by planting mixed forests, more similar to those that would exist in nature, which are forests
The forest lives with or without humans, as we also have to live on this earth, we try to coexist with it and not dominate it. These are very modern concepts, they were certainly not thought of in the past, but in fact it is the basic concept of sustainability, we have to coexist with everyone, we must not dominate.
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FOREST NURSERY: THE SCHOOL OF THE TREES
Interview with Elisabetta Zanetti, nurserywoman of the Magnificent Community of Fiemme.
Ms Elisabetta Zanetti, could you introduce yourself and de scribe your role as a nurserywoman working for the Magnifi cent Community of Fiemme?
I’m Elisabetta, I’ve been working for 30 years for the Magnificent Community of Fiemme which, as you well know, safeguards the forest heritage of Val di Fiemme. Specifically, I am a nurserywoman, in the sense that I work in the nursery where we produce the seedlings.
Could you describe in a detailed way the practices enacted in the forest nursery? What is the process from planting the seed to the final product in the Community’s sawmill?
We take the seed, from the ‘strobili’, from the pine cones. We keep the Lagorai species, which are our spruce, larch, broadleaf and also stone pine plants. From here we sow. We start from the seed to the semi-finished product in the sawmill. But before we get to the semi-finished product in the sawmill, there is the whole process of growing the spruce, practical ly a nursery is like a tree school, where you sow the seeds, make transplants, leave the plant in the planter until it is four years old. So you follow the plant for four years from birth, from dissemination to four years of growth, which will then be removed and tak en to the forest for reforestation. In this case, where
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there was Vaia, but also before, where there were cuts of 35 40,000 cubic metres of normal cuts by our log gers, we always do them manually for reforestation. Basically, my job is just to nurture these fir trees. We grow about 90,000 bare-root seedlings and 10,000 in pots. Because then some plants are instead thrown in as larch because it has a longer survival time with its or its bread in its own soil, having a deep and long root, which the fir does not have and therefore takes root better. And basically we try to harvest the pine cones in the autumn when they are ripe. Years are not always fruitful for this seed, because if there has not been pollination like last year, the pine cone does not have a fertile seed on the contrary, because then nature does all its own thing. When Vaia was there there was a huge pollination, you could just see clouds of this pollen. It’s something that happens every seven-eight years, that big. So it would seem that almost nature had already anticipated Vaia with this pollination so that we would not be left out ‘in the open’. Let’s say that nature is enough, so I take this seed from the pine cones by weight, i.e. every quantity is not wasted. I know that this year I need 50,000 seedlings for a transplant, I go by weight and nothing is wasted and he practically gets by when he germinates. He stays still for two years in the seed bed, because then I will show the nursery structure. After that I take these seedlings out of the seedbed. I try to save the most beautiful ones, the straightest ones, the strongest ones, the ones that don’t have the double toe, I throw a selection of these plants, which I then use tractor machinery. They are put back into the planting, which is the largest part of the nursery.
They stay there for four years, but in these four years what do I have to do? Me? I have to remove weeds, do servicing, water. If there are some plants that are a bit ugly, taking them out of the ground, is just like having a normal vegetable garden. You chase them. Generally there is not a die-off, it is really a 10% dieoff out of 100,000 plants are very robust. Then the nursery is an altitude of 1400 metres and this is very important because when you take the plant out for it to go into the forest it is already a certain altitude. When spring starts, if I had plants, they would already be at 800 metres here in Cavalese. They would have already sprouted and I could not remove them while they are sprouting. Six points you’ve seen when you’re in spring they make these nice green needles, they’re doing the Buddha, so you shouldn’t even touch them there and the fact that they’re at an altitude so they’re stationary takes them off before they sprout. They are stationary, you take them off and you take them to the mountains, that’s the altitude. You can go even to 1500 miles but finally you go around is very impor tant. Then there is sun, water, a favourable land area. Then when we take the plants out of the nursery they are selected, the area is chosen. There are workers there who follow the reforestation and basically we take the plants, bring them to this altitude. And there is another job, always followed by a forester, because even there they have to be planted in a certain way. It’s not like you put five plants there, 2 to 6 a direc tion because you start at the top of the mountain, come down and work. Very hard, by the way, for the workers, because everything is done manually with a hoe then you have to cover them by putting a
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there was Vaia, but also before, where there were cuts of 35 40,000 cubic metres of normal cuts by our log gers, we always do them manually for reforestation. Basically, my job is just to nurture these fir trees. We grow about 90,000 bare-root seedlings and 10,000 in pots. Because then some plants are instead thrown in as larch because it has a longer survival time with its or its bread in its own soil, having a deep and long root, which the fir does not have and therefore takes root better. And basically we try to harvest the pine cones in the autumn when they are ripe. Years are not always fruitful for this seed, because if there has not been pollination like last year, the pine cone does not have a fertile seed on the contrary, because then nature does all its own thing. When Vaia was there there was a huge pollination, you could just see clouds of this pollen. It’s something that happens every seven-eight years, that big. So it would seem that almost nature had already anticipated Vaia with this pollination so that we would not be left out ‘in the open’. Let’s say that nature is enough, so I take this seed from the pine cones by weight, i.e. every quantity is not wasted. I know that this year I need 50,000 seedlings for a transplant, I go by weight and nothing is wasted and he practically gets by when he germinates. He stays still for two years in the seed bed, because then I will show the nursery structure. After that I take these seedlings out of the seedbed. I try to save the most beautiful ones, the straightest ones, the strongest ones, the ones that don’t have the double toe, I throw a selection of these plants, which I then use tractor machinery. They are put back into the planting, which is the largest part of the nursery.
They stay there for four years, but in these four years what do I have to do? Me? I have to remove weeds, do servicing, water. If there are some plants that are a bit ugly, taking them out of the ground, is just like having a normal vegetable garden. You chase them. Generally there is not a die-off, it is really a 10% dieoff out of 100,000 plants are very robust. Then the nursery is an altitude of 1400 metres and this is very important because when you take the plant out for it to go into the forest it is already a certain altitude. When spring starts, if I had plants, they would already be at 800 metres here in Cavalese. They would have already sprouted and I could not remove them while they are sprouting. Six points you’ve seen when you’re in spring they make these nice green needles, they’re doing the Buddha, so you shouldn’t even touch them there and the fact that they’re at an altitude so they’re stationary takes them off before they sprout. They are stationary, you take them off and you take them to the mountains, that’s the altitude. You can go even to 1500 miles but finally you go around is very impor tant. Then there is sun, water, a favourable land area. Then when we take the plants out of the nursery they are selected, the area is chosen. There are workers there who follow the reforestation and basically we take the plants, bring them to this altitude. And there is another job, always followed by a forester, because even there they have to be planted in a certain way. It’s not like you put five plants there, 2 to 6 a direc tion because you start at the top of the mountain, come down and work. Very hard, by the way, for the workers, because everything is done manually with a hoe then you have to cover them by putting a
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stone for moisture. Not all of them survive because it depends on the trenches from the water, if it rains, from the soil, if it’s fertile, if it’s gravelly. In short, it is a bit more difficult there. But what happens once you do this? In the spring period, which is generally May until mid-June at the latest? The plant is still you plant it in the woods and in the forest. Does it bud? No, so if it already sprouts it means it survives. If it does not, you come back in the autumn and where there has been dieback you remove them and put plants back in. Because then they also do an autumn when they stop. It is a really temporal thing and with Vai it is difficult because the area is vast. But you only have a month to do this work, because otherwise you cannot be sure that this plant will survive. That is, we follow nature. It is not that nature follows us. So even in the forest, after you have transplanted the plant after a couple of months, the workers go and cut the grass around to see if it has survived. To give them that light, so if they get choked by weeds, they don’t grow. It is very important to go after them, cut the bulk of the weeds and monitor what we have done at least for the first year and the year after. Because then if the first year you transplanted you did all this work, the next year you go to. Everything should have gone well, but the first and second year also need to be monitored in the forest. Once the plant is big, that will take 30 years. The average then depends on the diameters. These are selected by age and also by area, in the sense that there are plans one on the seminary, three said of the province’s plans, that you have to cut that area free. It would still be a normal selec tion. It was noticed without a variant before Vaia and
and then the log is taken downstream and to the sawmill, where they make semi-finished products and poles of various things.
Did these processes changed after Vaia? If yes, how?
It has changed. We have increased production. Certainly we are also trying to find somewhat faster systems for reforestation. There was an idea of those that we are going to try to do, little balls with soil and its bread and put the seed there. Let’s say we put little balls and then with a helicopter distribute in the territories they would fall in the area, being already inside, in their soil, they sprout in the forest. Another help is natural regeneration. Fortunately, again thanks to this year’s pollination, in 2018 many plants are growing on their own, where they have dragged their trunks, where the soil is fertile, and that will help us avoid manually rebuilding certain areas. The most important areas are where there are roads, hydrogeological hazards and stuff like that. However, the work has increased, and on the one hand we have become a bit rejuvenated because the system was al ways the same, so there has been some interest on the part of forestry doctors to go and see other realities, such as Switzerland, where there have already been these events and then try to speed up reforestation. But it has to be said that the plant needs its time up to four years. It’s not ready, it’s still nature, because where it has passed, it has passed. And before that, little things like that happened, but not to the extent that it had not even done any damage as it is, in terms of quantity, but. That turned everything upside down.
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It was really bad and I was really almost crying. Everyone was looking around, saying ‘it’s not possi ble’. It’s not even nice to see now. These empty areas, however, say that the forest gains, that it’s better even for the meadows, at the end the forest was almost too dense.
THE IDEALIZATION OF THE LANDSCAPE, RURAL POPULATION AND CLIMATE OUTBREAKES. Interview with Pierangelo Giacomuzzi, lumberjack for the Magnificent Community of Fiemme and independent artist.
Mr. Pierangelo Giacomuzzi, could you introduce yourself and describe your role as lumberjack for the Magnificent Community of Fiemme and your independent practice as an artist?
My name is Pierangelo Giacomazzi, I am half Ladin, half from Moena and half from Ziano. Both countries are part of the Magnificent Comminity, which in cludes both, let’s say, Ladin-speaking, German-speak ing and Italian-speaking villages, so we live quite a bit in a multicultural area, a little Italian laboratory of cultures, of identities. Basically, I work as a logger, I’m a seasonal logger, so let’s say from when the snow goes. Until then in June, when I start with some work in the meadows. Because these animals too, so I have to make hay for them. And then until Septem ber, where I then start my forestry work again. Until December, in short, until it starts snowing heavily. In addition to these two activities he carries on my activity. Third, let’s call it that. My passion is also a bit for what I have studied, and so it carries on con temporary art, let’s say mainly related to territories. So not an art, let’s say ornamental or ornamental, but I try to make the territory dialogue with those who are the actors of the territory and those who come from outside, creating, seeking new visions, by relating what is outside, so what also comes from the city, for better or for worse, with what we are.
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what is outside, so what also comes from the city, for better or for worse, with what we are.
In your artistic practice you work with topics such as the idealization of the mountain landscape, could you describe these dynamics, also from the point of view of a native who works in strict contact with the forest?
The mountain has been very idealised lately, espe cially if there is a large tourist component. Every year we have to have something new, but also some bases where people are comfortable: they know that in the mountains there are Christmas lights, there are hearts on the windowsills, a Christmas trees, snowy slopes. In short, a whole series of local inventions to attract the new market. Like hicking, which in the end is nothing more than walking. We have all these pseudo-meaningless inventions, which then lead to no longer understanding where we want to go, who we are. Are we what others want or are we what we want? I go hacking because I feel like it, or because I have to satisfy publicity? Culture has become folk lore, tradition has become folklore for tourist use and consumption. This has been happening since the 60s and 70s. In my opinion, there is an emptying out of traditions, cultures, and then that is also reflected on the land, because if we go and see the woods as they were even just twenty years ago, they have completely changed, there is the no culture of the woods. Now that the people who go out to get wood are the elder ly, you don’t see very many young people going.
Perhaps it is all a loss of culture, of traditions, of knowledge, of a desire for the land that is also re flected in those who have to come or want to come here for tourism. Of course, with the arrival of new mechanisms also imported from the city and adapted to tourism, a lot of things were taken. But then this is also reflected in what is on offer to tourists, because we see some misunderstandings within even what is the description of an area that you see is made by people who do not have a culture or at any rate have not delved into it, have not pursued a certain dis course with the area, with the population of the area. In the long run, people realise that this is no longer the reality. That we have become a quote-unquote amusement park for them. And I think the locals are starting to too. They are already starting to get fed up, in short, with all this idealisation. Why? Why doesn’t it work, basically? Why then are we using an amuse ment park? Or is it us, in short? And who comes from outside? For better or worse, they have to take us as we are. If we have a woodland is not a forest, is a different thing.
What art practice can do in this socio-political context?
The only thing art can do, I think, is to invite artists from outside or at least bring out those who are here and make them dialogue. More space for artists. What we have definitely decided to do is to involve the academies, let’s say students, or in any case recent graduates of the Italian academies. Bringing them here and having them work with what we have, which is wood. Then it is not that one has to be a sculptor,
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but one can work on this subject, that is complex, varied, broadened, let’s say. It has a tradition that is difficult to dismember even here, because if you don’t make religious artifacts, you don’t survive, let’s say, or you make trophies for sporting events, but little more. So we have to work a lot in this sense too. We have to detach ourselves from this thing, which is doing, pre cisely, the same thing forever for the same customers, the same categories of buyers.
Can you describe your own experience during the nights of Vaia and the impact of the storm on the landscape and on its idealization?
I remember a big mess. We passed all the bridges, so there were bridges that were overflowing. Eventually the lights went out, so you could see very little, there were a few of those emergency lights, you could see bins flying, it’s a bit of a mess then. It sounded like breaking bones, in short. At first it was a big surprise, then, in short, a bit of sadness. Maybe there is no bad that is not good. Even to realise how dangerous a tree next to a house can be. I mean, we have cottages with trees, second homes, mainly with just this idealisation of the fake mountain cabin, with the tree next to it, like Heidi and the grandfather’s house. So from a cer tain point of view it was good, because people started calling to cut down the plants that were still stand ing, but maybe they were poised, broken, or in any case they weren’t in the right place, but even before they weren’t in the right place. You rarely meet in old mountain villages. No, I don’t think you will ever meet him in a hut with a 40-metre fir tree on the
side. Why not? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a de signed landscape, but not by locals, but by someone who has idealised the landscape. But then you get the consequences, you get the tree falling on your house. Beside those who maintained the local architecture, we are very artificial.
The landscape is precisely a designed infrastructure for tim ber production, a monoculture of spruce trees. How do you this will change now that climatic outbreakes have disman teld the imaginary of the picture-perfect landscape, and the aim is to plant bio-diverse and more resilient forests?
What is the problem? Here we have always sought quality, the quality of timber. You make it this way by creating a monoculture with firs. There is a design behind it. Even the fibre of the wood. The quality of Fiemme wood comes from that. Mixed woods do. But then it depends on the quality, from the environmen tal point of view, from the economic, management point of view? There it will be quite a battle, let’s say. We certainly can’t get the same quality with mixed forests. Hardly that, certainly, because obviously a larch grows differently from a fir or a Douglas fir Asia or Uran. So if we put ash beeches, the tendency is ob viously to react differently, because the light entering the forest enters differently and let’s say it makes the plant grow differently. We see that we have to change that. I agree too. If not, we end up in 50 years with the same problem, probably, or maybe even less. Be cause who knows now with the climate change issues we see. We can’t put a nice glass bubble over Val di Fiemme? If Vaia didn’t happen, we would probably
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go on like this, but let’s see now what they will decide at the top.. let’s see.
SPRUCE ECONOMIES: MUTATION OVER TIME AND RESOURCE SHORTAGES
Interview with Piera Ciresa, co-owner of Ciresa company, an internationally recognized manifacture of musical instruments.
Mrs. Piera Ciresa, could you introduce yourself and the histo ry of Ciresa company?
I am Piera Ciresa, co-owner with my sister and broth er-in-law of Ciresa, which was founded by my father exactly 70 years ago, in 1952. I grew up amidst the wooden planks, in the summer I worked in the com pany and I always have this memory of music spin ning around my house. I don’t know why, but maybe because I was the oldest child, I was always somehow involved in my father profession, in his art. He was a native of Tesero and was born in 1922.Already in those years the production of musical instruments, specifically harmoniums and pianos, was develop ing. He learnt in those years Then he was away from Italy during the war period and when he came back, the factories started up again with production and he just got a job. After that, in 52 he decided to set up his own business. And in those years were years where there was incredible economic growth because post-war brought a very important development in the production of soundboards. At first it was only for Italian companies. Then slowly it began to spread throughout Europe. At that time there was incredible competition. To put a figure on it in the 1980s, Japan alone produced something like 250,000 pianos a year. Imagine Germany, which has always been the nation with the largest number of factories.
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And it was at that time there that a more significant and also more visible collaboration with the Fiemme Community was born. So already in the 1960s he was serving the community. With the timber there, almost its intrinsic musical value could not be any different. What comes out of the factory is produced exclusively from the Fiemme’s spruce. In fact, and we have to have extremely choice material from trees, as straight as possible, growing on an average of 1000 to 1600 metres. And fundamental and it is the growth rings that must be tight and regular. Equally fundamen tal is the lack of Equally fundamental is the lack of branches or resin pockets or sculptures, because they obviously affect sound production. So both the boards that we make for pianos and all the parts that we have for lutherie must be as perfect as possible.
Can you describe how the latest extreme climate outbreakes have affected the production?
Obviously Vaia in this has had an extremely negative influence. The scarcity of materials has forced us to buy logs, every log imaginable within six months to have the material available to work from Vaia until the end of the year. When Vaia happened, for a few days we were annihilated. We also did some crowd funding to avoid having to go on crazy mortgages. And in this thing, when it came to say “save the Fiemme’s spruce” it was the trump card. For lot of ordinary people, not necessarily professionals, talking about the Fiemme spruce, in Val di Fiemme, especial ly for them, was beautiful. It opened a world about the beauty of the forests, about dream holidays, etc.
So we really had a huge response on an economic level but also such sentimental romantic episodes just addressed to the woods of the valley. We have such a pile of letters of people who have signed and made every expression of appreciation for Val di Fiemme and the forests of Val di Fiemme. It’s clear that a forest takes 100 years to grow, if that’s OK, if he thinks that the average age of the logs we use ranges from 150 to 200 220 years, well, it’s not easy either. Neither for the foresters, seems to me, is not exactly clear. Right now we are working, but in constrast, the anxiety of not having enough material plays a big role.
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