When: September 16th – 21st – 23rd – 28th 2022
Where: Spazi Bomben, Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, via Cornarotta 7, Treviso, Italy
Website: Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche
“Giardini in Mostra” is the theme of the new edition of Naturale inclinazione, the series of meetings about garden, organized from Friday 16 September (6 pm) by the Benetton Studi Ricerche Foundation, curated by Simonetta Zanon (coordinator of the landscape projects area), and inspired by the figure of the landscape architect Ippolito Pizzetti (1926-2007).
On Friday 16, Wednesday 21, Friday 23 and Wednesday 28 September 2022, the Spazi Bomben in Treviso will host four events to offer unusual perspectives on garden, starting from two interesting points of view – the exhibitions on the gardens and what the gardens show -, in a series of meetings that will give space not only to scholars and experts, but also to the language of cinema and music.
Simonetta Zanon says: “Gardens are open works, naturally fragile and subject to constant change as they are living, which well represent the cultural and social contexts, fashions and different ideas of nature that underlie their conception and construction. With garden exhibitions, in some way, it may seem possible to stop time, fix an image, return to a past whose authority is recognized to simulate that duration that is impossible in reality. There are many attempts to “frame” and show off a world that remains impregnable and in constant evolution, just think of the ideal models of the different “types” of gardens belonging exclusively to the dominant geography, exhibited in Florence in 1931 with the evident political objective of reviving the glories of the “Italian garden”, or of the “real” thematic gardens set up on the occasion of major international exhibitions, or – finally – of the most recent visions, which have been able to stage the garden as an ideal meeting place of nature, art and science, ethics, aesthetics and social sharing.
Naturale inclinazione 2022 starts from here, presenting the results of the research For a curatorial project of the garden, which will be the focus of the first appointment, and then continues the reflection by proposing an inversion of gaze to move from garden exhibitions to what the gardens show and can inspire, in their suspended condition between being the privileged place of an individual human adventure and the microcosm that refers to and lives in the planetary dimension, and which reveals the amazing biological mechanisms and connections between living beings of the planet, showing at the same time the unstoppable crisis.
The program is marked by some gardens emblematic of this tension: Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, the garden on the gray pebbles between the sea and the nuclear power plant, built and much loved by the director Derek Jarman in his last months of life, whose alienating beauty has inspired the compositions of the album I Should Have Been a Gardener; Compton House (Groombridge Place in Kent, in reality), in which a decadent and at times grotesque aristocracy moves, whose murky conspiracies will be revealed by the garden itself, in a compelling exchange between reality and representation (The mysteries of the garden of Compton House); and, finally, the invisible gardens, those that may “have no paths or paving but only plants, animals, insects, ideas and more plants”.
Program
Friday 16 September at 6 pm
For a garden curatorial project
Michele Tobia, architect, presents the research on the notions of “garden” and “exhibition” conducted in 2022 as a grant holder in the Foundation, and the experimental installation, created in the spaces of the Foundation in the context of the same research (with the participation of Luigi Latini , Mario Lupano, Monique Mosser, Filippo Pizzoni, José Tito Rojo and Simonetta Zanon). Introduction by Luigi Latini, director of the Benetton Studies Research Foundation, professor of Landscape Architecture, Iuav University of Venice; concluding comment by Sara Marini, professor of Architectural and Urban Composition, Iuav.
Wednesday 21 September at 6 pm
I should have been a gardener
Meeting with the musician Alessandra Novaga, who will perform live the songs from her album I Should Have Been a Gardener, inspired by the figure of Derek Jarman and his garden at Prospect Cottage, in Dungeness, Kent.
The performance will be preceded by the short film Great Gardens. Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage by Howard Sooley (UK, 2014, 6′) and an introduction by Anna Lambertini, professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Florence.
Friday 23 September at 8.30 pm
The mysteries of the Compton House garden (The Draughtsman’s Contract)
by Peter Greenaway, Great Britain, 1982, 108′.
Screening introduced by Paola Brunetta, professor and film critic.
Wednesday 28 September at 6 pm
The invisible gardens
Meeting with the landscape architect and writer Antonio Perazzi, on the occasion of the release of his book The Invisible Gardens (UTET, Milan 2022).