The project starts by a reflection on the 2018 meteorological event that have affected much of the province of Belluno and other parts of Northern Italy: Vaia. About three years later what is left are a large number of plants which still are spilling to the ground losing their economic value and being attacked by another destructive element that is affecting also those plants that are still alive: the Bark beetle. This is a beetle, Ips tipogrhaphus, an invisible enemy. This animal digs geometric tunnels (hence its name) under the bark of the tree causing their death and, due to its massive proliferation, threatens to compromise large portions of the forest. This project took shape starting with a collection of bark eroded by this beetle, recovered from the forests of the Agordino area, photographed and catalogued, to create an archive. Inside these tunnels dug by the animal, strips of bioluminescent tape were pasted to emphasize these pathways. The barks were the “set up” by placing them on some fir logs. The work becomes “site specific” suggesting a path through the forest to visualise it. During the day, however, it goes mostly unnoticed, while at dusk and at night it becomes site specific thanks to the bioluminescent effect. It is an attempt to put the focus on this invisible drama unfolding before our eyes. In fact, this animal proceeds unnoticed in its destructive act, but that creates symbols that are rich in poetics so much so that often these devoured logs come to resemble obelisks engraved in some archaic character and they stand there in the middle of the forest naked and drawn as if they want to tell us something. So, in this project, I tried to make two points of reading subsist: a man-tree comparison, which becomes so vulnerable in the face of these invisible attacks. Shall we go deeper? Just see how a virus knocked out the entire world population, or we can see how man is so similar to the bar beetle in his destructive act (global warning, deforestation and ecological encroachment. Should I continue? Can be related with these weather events that have brought us to these results). Each event is concatenated, cause-and-effect. In the video made to document the work, audio plays a key role in the narrative: on one hand the chewing noise of the bark beetle that undisturbed devours the plants, quite a feast I say, and the sound of some woodsman about to procure a plant to keep warm during the winter, on the other hand an alienation sound, obtained though a sampling program by developing a sound from the typographer’s drawing. The fact undoubtedly wants and must create a disorientation, a sense un unease.
