Alecio-project proposal

GRADUATION PROJECT OUTLINE

1 What do you want to make?

My plan is to continue to expand my research about the theme of intersection between Nature and Culture, a topic I’ve been researching on for the past 2 years. This case study is coming along together with my thesis, which will deeply analyze the context and possible expansions.

The project I’m working on it’s called Visible Forces, and focuses on the nature-culture dualism, offering a personal point of view on the historical and anthropological discussions related to this subject matter.

Since 2019 I have been creating images related to this study. Some of them represent landscapes and natural environments, created in a more spontaneous ways, while others are more planned shots, conceived in a more controlled environments such as a photo studio, or with the use of the scanner. Overall, my photography practice stays in between the staged and “unstaged”.

This collection of images will come out under the form of a book which contains photographs, digital manipulated visuals as well as scans.

2 How do you plan to make it?

As mentioned, the research I will conduct for my thesis correlates with this body of work. The process of writing and image-making will intertwine and inform one another.

Usually, my workflow it’s pretty rational but intuitive at the same time: I do research via collecting text, images both online and offline, case studies and resources. I put them in order and divide into different categories. At the same time, I like to be inspired by the aesthetic flow that all of these sources are creating: I therefore choose a visual and aesthetic direction which comes spontaneously from the kind of references I’m surrounding of. Most of the images that will be printed in the book has already been shot. What’s missing are some digital scans, texts and digitally manipulated visuals. Regarding the book design, I am working together with a duo of graphic designers, we are developing together the book concept, graphic layout and printing materials.

Thinking about the final outcome, in addition to the book, I would like to create an immersive installation for the graduation show. Including already made shots and brand new images that I will produce along the year, the idea is to give a new shape and tri-dimension to a medium that is mainly perceived as 2D on paper or walls. I would like to use projection as well as sound as additional languages.

3 What is your timetable?

November: → Images editing → Start the images selection process → Work on the text with the curator

December: → Start working on the book layout, graphics and paper → Initial thoughts on the crowdfunding campaign → Translate the curator text

January: → Continue working on the book layout, graphics and paper → Design the crowdfunding campaign → Produce new photograms in the darkroom

February: → Finalize the book layout and graphics → Print dummy book → Finalize the crowdfunding campaign → Produce new photograms in the darkroom

March: → Launching the crowdfunding Campaign → Ending Crowdfunding Campaign

April: → Book Printing → Edit the photograms

May: → Book Launch in Milan/Rotterdam/Paris/Habitat → Start Working on the exhibition

June: → Build up the exhibition

4 Why do you want to make it?

I started to develop an interest into this topic few years ago, while I was reading texts regarding the anthropological studies conducted by Claude Lévi-Strauss during the last century, mainly focused on ethnographic field research in Brazil. I was mainly struck by his analysis on themes such as linguistics, taboos, signs and traces.

As time passed, I started to dive deeply into these topics and I realized that there was a straightforward yet unconscious link with my photography research projects realized the previous years. I’ve always been interested in the natural as well as constructed landscapes.

As a true outdoor lover, practicing hiking and sport activities in nature, I accumulated hundreds images of natural environments, plants details, city landscapes, exploring my surroundings with the medium I feel closer to me, the photo camera. In this spontaneous flow of events, I became aware of the importance of these topics, and then emerged the idea to consciously and actively produce a body of work that would talk about these issues.

In 2019 I did a trip around Brazil. With the research in mind, I tried to translate the theoretical texts I was reading into visuals, looking for traces and signs of that nature/culture dualism. Two years after, the images shot along the time started to compose a more unified body of work.

I wanted to take advantage of this time to develop the narrative in the most efficient yet meaningful way, delivering it in the right shape.

5 Who can help you and how?

Menno Boer - Darkroom and printing tips David, Ine and Rosella could help me with the narrative of the story as well as visuals.

6 Relation to previous practice

I am interested in developing a practice that deals with creating and expanding narratives deriving from literary works and turn them into fictions or documents, in order to create images by using a tone that can be both revealing and recreational. This project intends to be a continuation and a deeper dive into my ongoing research on Nature and Culture dualism.

As I previously mentioned, during the last year I’ve been working on different series of images that presented how natural landscapes and elements had inspired or affected our surrounding ‘artificial’ world.

For instance, in 2018 I developed a project called Port Talbot, a documentation of the environmental, social and economical effects on one of the most polluted city in the UK. During these years, my visual language as well as the approach evolved, but the fundamental premises remained. My intention is to develop the concept more in different directions, theoretically as well as practically, building a body of work that live as a generative evolution of the previous ones.

7 Relation to a larger context

Nature and culture converge in many ways that span values, beliefs and norms to practices, livelihoods, knowledge and languages. As a result, there exists a mutual feedback between cultural systems and the environment, with a shift in one often leading to a change in the other. For example, knowledges evolve with the ecosystems upon which they are based, and languages contain words describing ecosystem components. If plants or animals are lost, then the words used to describe them are often lost shortly afterwards, and this changes the way the natural environment is shaped by the practices of those human communities. Nature provides the setting in which cultural processes, activities and belief systems develop, all of which feed back to shape biodiversity.

8 References/bibliography

De Lattre, M. (2021). Mother’s Therapy. The Eriskay Connection.

Hartmann, J. (2021). Mastering the Elements. The Eriskay Connection.

Steadman, P. (1979). The Evolution of Designs Biological Analogy in Architecture and the Applied Arts /Philip Steadman. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

March L. and Steadman P. (1971), The Geometry of Environment (London, 1971), pp. 229-32.

Thompson, D. (1992). On Growth and Form (Canto) (J. Bonner, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107325852

Cook, Theodore Andrea, Sir. (1903). Spirals in nature and art. J. Murray. Retrieved from 10.5479/sil.25890.39088001368638

Cook, Theodore Andrea, Sir. (1914) The Curves of Life (London, 1914)

J. Stoots. Karl Blossfeldt Indisputably Modern, 2011

Murata, H., Material Forms in nature: The Photographs of Karl Blossfeldt. Scholfield, Peter Hugh. “The Theory of Proportion in Architecture.” (2011).