TRACES IN MONTESPLUGA
Experimental research and art project by Susanna Pozzoli
with the support of Saul Caligari and Barbara Bonnefoy
+ project participants

TRACES IN MONTESPLUGA will be presented in its final form as an exhibition and editorial project, composed of distinct parts:
1. a coherent series of works, photographs, video, sound and texts by Susanna Pozzoli who re-elaborates in the creative gesture what has been learned and collected:
the experience with the landscape, the notions of botany climate change surveys, study materials, exchanges with study materials, exchanges with residents and tourists... (See this small selecton oline)

2. an herbarium made by Saul Caligari;

3. a collection of apparatuses organising the research, experimental and fragmented, composed of notes extracts and reflections, involving inhabitants and enthusiasts
on different aspects of this place and its its complexity; shared in interviews, or evoked in the weeks of fieldwork, they are often correlated by images. In this section will be reported
the observations of Barbara Bonnefoy, Saul Caligari and of the participants in the experiential ateliers realised in July and August 2023 and 2024.

In summer 2023 from a theoretical idea Susanna Pozzoli started to explore with photography became TRACES IN MONTESPLUGA an experience and a ground for study and confrontation. 

Susanna invited two experts and set in motion a call to participate for those who know Montespluga: its very few residents, farmers, hoteliers, tourists; since autumn 2022 she has been interviewing these frequenters of Montespluga and collected material. Saul Caligari, gardener, expert in Alpine botany, fine connoisseur of the places studied, a figure deeply connected to the local fabric, and Barbara Bonnefoy, researcher, lecturer in environmental psychology at the University of Nanterre in Paris with solid experience in field research, accepted this proposal, supporting the theoretical study and the creation of an approach to relate to the place, the flora and its inhabitants.

Barbara, Saul and Susanna confronted the reality of this place, encountering specific environmental problems in a limited period, confronting the people who live and pass through these places, proposing them an active participation. A precise angle of observation was chosen and, from from this aspect, a broader reflection was opened.
Saul Caligari was at the helm of this reading of the territory from an environmental point of view and was able to orientate the participants in the workshops inviting them to focus their attention on the relationship between flora - landscape - climatic elements - human presence. In July and August four workshops open to the public and weekly days were organised dedicated to meeting and telling stories about Montespluga. Homeland, a multifunctional space made available by the municipality of Municipality of Madesimo for the project, has thus become a place for debate, a small square to talk about flora, the environment, tourism in the mountains and the relationship one has with this landscape.

In the filigree of this research, straddling the artistic, botanical and sociology, there is a desire to draw the public's attention to our relationship with the landscape and climate change, in the hope of hope of activating a critical reflection towards the way of posing and act towards nature, as individuals and as a community.
The entire project looks to the future and stimulates a vision of a tomorrow: given that there is no possibility of imagining a future without observing and understanding the present, it is from the ‘here and now’ that the research returns to look at the past to imagine this place fifty years from now.
TRACES A MONTESPLUGA is proposed as an interdisciplinary study of a place and its complexity, with a strong focus on the connections between elements, eradicating the established dualism between humanity and nature that dominates the western vision.

You can download the REPORT in the TEXT section