we think the forest is out there, but it’s inside us
Milano
July 2020
not an ontological relativism
but rather promoting a sort of double
simultaneous movement
Stefano Boeri Centennial scientist James Lovelock recounts his insight into Gaia as he investigates the possibility of a human species transferring to Mars. He turns, in a sort of conceptual twist, looks at the Earth and perceives its uniqueness. A movement taken by Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta, the ESA astrophysicist, who explained how the image of the Earth rising as seen from the Moon was a great little catastrophe in the conceptualization paradigm of the planet. Your work may have this sort of conceptual precondition. You both tend to view life and its joints in the plant and animal world as an interconnected system. This is the first point on which I would like to hear your reflections. The other theme is the reflection on anthropocentrism — any act of ours is an implicit and involuntary strengthening of anthropocentrism.
Giorgio Vacchiano You mentioned Earthrise, the photo taken from the Moon, the dawn of the rising Earth. There is. When the Voyager II spacecraft passed Saturn, astronomer Carl Sagan — who was also a talented storyteller — had the idea of spinning the spacecraft and took a photo: a barely visible dot. The only bright spot in the middle of a band of Saturn’s rings. He commented on that photo saying . Teleconnections are climatic systems that cross the earth and, through the ocean or atmospheric currents, connect different points, tying them like two ends of the same elastic, to the same climatic trends. What happens in one place happens in another, even if apparently distant. When a catastrophe occurs — the recent fires in Australia — even the media realize that these are not isolated events. In the last ten years, ‘bad weather’ has been revealed but events are linked to a shared trend. We are finding that even in densely populated Europe, agricultural fields are more fertile and productive when surrounded by trees and forests because pollinators, insects, can circulate quickly — as can nutrients, which contribute to soil fertility. Relating to ecosystems is equivalent to relating to other people. Good use of wood can benefit other humans. A wooden house improves someone’s living conditions. There is a book by Haskell, which talks about how trees help us build relationships, even with distant people, trees and forests.
