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The landscape of Tuscany: praised for its natural beauty but intensively designed. Val d’ Orcia is an extraordinary example of the way the landscape was re-written in Renaissance times to reflect the utopic ideals of good governance. Siena was a commune and the Val d’ Orcia a model of sustainable rural development. Between 1338 and 1340, Lorenzetti painted, in Siena’s town hall, the ideal landscape; in the Val d’ Orcia it became reality. In 1999 the area was designated an artistic, natural and cultural park through the initiative of five municipalities with a common management body. In 2004, Val d’ Orcia was added to the list of UNESCO heritage sites, and its aesthetic appearance protected and regulated. In the summer of 2013 Marina Comandini and Monteverdi Tuscany organised a three-day art festival, Per Apsera ad Astra , at Castiglioncello del Trinoro, in the province of Siena. My contribution to the festival was a land art intervention directly on (rather than the more general in ) the valley – a question for both the people living there and to visiting tourists. To whom does this landscape really belong? Who has the ownership of its beauty and harmony? Everything in the valley as we see it now was designed, reshaped, destroyed, rebuilt and finally protected and regulated. After millions of years of evolution the natural and anthropologic processes of this landscape have stopped, constrained to resist any human or natural interventions. It will now stay still for future generations, registered as it was in the early twenty-first century, not as it might develop. Seen from the main square of Castiglioncello del Trinoro, the registered trademark symbol ®, an alien sign in a human landscape, points out just how land and landscape can be alienated. land art | ownership by giuseppe licari Il Paesaggio Oggetto ®
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This project was made possible with the support of CBK Rotterdam and Monteverdi Tuscany.
Giuseppe Licari. Registered: Il Paesaggio Oggetto Per Aspera ad Astra, a festival curated by Marina Comandini. Monteverdi Tuscany, Val d’Orcia, Siena, Italy 2013 Land art intervention: 70 x 90 m
Giuseppe Licari
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