Industries of Nature
WOJR/Civitella Ranieri Architecture Prize
June 13–July 23, 2019
The WOJR/Civitella Ranieri Architecture Prize, sponsored by the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based design firm, WOJR, invites an emerging architect each year to Civitella Ranieri, Umbria, which is the birthplace of Arte Povera, the avant-garde art movement known for its use of modest resources and everyday materials. Conforming to the region’s history and traditions, the prizewinner should not use digital modeling and fabrication software and must rely solely on local resources.
In the summer of 2019 Alejandro Haiek embarked on the WOJR/Civitella Architecture Fellowship at the Castle with the aim to make an installation. During his fellowship at Civitella, Alejandro researched the environs around the castle and considered how nature and industry worked carefully in tandem to form the traditional Umbrian landscape. The result was a participatory reinterpretation of the agricultural and industrial systems which had framed and changed the Umbrian countryside, especially during the last century.
The challenge of the work was to create a community engagement process and territorial networking; to weave the intrinsic local understanding of geology and topography into industrial production, to create a restorative and regenerative artwork. The consequences of the process are as diverse as collaborations between local producers and chefs pushing boundaries of self-sufficiency, as well as artistic connections between well-known composers, filmmakers and writers, resident at Civitella at the time, to harness the capabilities of improvisation and collective making. Collaborations with other fellows in residence enhanced his project. For instance, the intervention’s twisted forms and landscape transformation were translated into a series of soundscapes, which resulted in a musical piece in collaboration with composer Nina C. Young. Sounds of Loudness transforms the geometrical and spatial structure of Industries of Nature into sound environments. Korean composer and conductor, Texu Kim, edited Landscape Frequencies, an audiovisual piece from a stop-motion sequence of the landscape-scale performance, synchronized with the mechanical and manual movement of hay-bales across the fields, documenting Alejandro’s process, in collaboration with Pauselli family farmers and photographer Giorgia Fanelli.
Industries of Nature is a project developed in an intersection between design, art, and social engagement. It develops practices of community reengineering, knowledge exchange and forms of subjectivities, inquiring about the future of city and country, the role of emerging technologies in labor, automation, and generational shifts. It suggests how the countryside and its local intelligence should be seen as a driver for change in today’s world, an industrious engine of innovation for the uncertain present and a fast-approaching future.
The work is not solely an art installation, it is generous in creating new exchanges and connections between industry and farming, overlapping the Civitella Ranieri artist community with local farmers, automobile robotics technicians, engineers, and producers. Haiek’s process began with meeting local laborers, builders, and fabricators to make a cartography of talents and resources which resulted in hybrid artwork: engaging local farmers and craftsmen in processes of abstract thinking and reflecting on the effects of industrialization in the landscape. The project comes together through engineering on social, landscape and structural levels. Economic processes were created, technological innovations established, and newfound creativity cemented, working side-by-side with local people in the production of a work of art and narrative for the future. The sculpture is as much a consolidation of the agricultural and industrial processes which exist in Civitella, as a re-enactment of history: when, in the 19th century, Civitella became a farm, transforming into a modern center of agriculture.
As a work, it does not materialize as an art object but instead documents the dynamic knowledge-exchange and learning through narratives and shared material resources as living archives. Using lines, dots, strips and surfaces, the topography of the site becomes transformed through this architectural device, leaving functional traces and seductive operative patterns parallel to nature’s own invisible geometries. The visitors move in between the old halm oaks on the castle’s Russian Terrace, experiencing nature through the performative tectonic installation, restructuring affectional links between the castle and the agricultural fields.
Industries of Nature is formed of three acts of collaboration and engagement.
See full video
ACT 1. Tracing Traditions: A Cartography of Talents / See online narrative
A photo essay of human-made landscapes and cultural geographies exhibited at Civitella Castle Gallery in collaboration with photographer Giorgia Fanelli. Contributions from poet Alexandra Teague and Civitella intern Samantha Lloyd-Knauf.
ACT 2. Unfolding traditions: A Choreography of Landscapes / See video
Land art intervention in collaboration with Pauselli Farms. Musical accompaniment in collaboration with compositor Texu Kim. Video and choreography in collaboration with Giorgia Fanelli.
ACT 3. Unfurling Traditions: A Scenography of Tectonics / See video
Torsion Series for Immersive Soundscape Installation in collaboration with composer Nina Young.
Active Geometries in collaboration with car robotics technician Roberto Cerrini and structural performance and logistics supported by EXUP Engineering. Growing Surfaces in collaboration with Civitella gardeners: Ennio Santini and Maurizio Bastianoni.
Performance event / See video
Oboe improvisation by Sky Macklay within art piece.
“An art that degrades until it disappears or returns to its original state. The setup is a learning process, for everyone. There are no construction drawings, only forms that emerge from participatory structural systems and common logics. The work is an assembly that returns to its place of origin, in factories and storage yards, or turns back into soil. Nothing is left over; everything evolves, dies, and revives in cycles between nature and industry. Only the networks and affective tissues, the local consciousness and the planetary order remain. The art is a tool for reengineering communities.”
—Alejandro Haiek
Civitella Ranieri Foundation:
Dana Prescott, executive director
Diego Mencaroni, residency director
Regine Basha, curator
Ilaria Locchi, fellow’s coordinator
Samantha Lloyd-Knauf, intern
Romana Ciubini, chef
Press pack:
Xenia Adjoubei
Ksenia Davydova
Irina Urriola, video editor
Mario Romano, video assistant
Special thanks to:
Manini Prefabbricati
Giorni Prefabbricati
Orfanini
Studio UGO
