The garden and beyond: a global garden
The garden as an ideal place for living, as a privileged space where man can experience an intimate and creative connection with nature.
Following in the theoretical footsteps of French landscape architect and agricultural engineer Gilles Clément (France, b.1943), keeping in tune with his inspiring idea of a “Planetary Garden”, this present project is intended as an open theoretical approach&artistic discourse on the “garden” seen as a metaphysical space: the garden as a state of mind.
“Landscape architecture” in particular, the concept of a biosphere together with the importance of biodiversity are pivotal ideas in the conception of our theoretical proposal.
What the garden can symbolically represent is the relation between Humankind and God in Nature.
The garden is – in a sense - an intermediate idea: at the crossroads of nature and culture, of matter and human consciousness.Since it is neither purely a physical place nor a mere ideal only, the garden discloses for us both dimensions (physical and metaphysical) in the form of human art.
Sadly enough, we presently live in an almost entirely “gardenless age” for lack of really “seeing” (and feeling) around us the gardens, within our towns, in our daily life and environment.Gardens can be food-producing or ornamental, haven or sanctuary, but they also represent “work,” meaning by this the building of the worlds that make us historical creatures.
Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens. Humans have long turned to gardens —both real and imaginary—for seeking refuge from the frenzy and tumult that surround them.
Specifically, “cultivation” in connection with “gardening” is a concept we derive from various, even ancient, authors, such as Dante, Boccaccio, Epicurus. Here, in the convergence of vital forces, in the garden’s microcosm, the cosmos manifests its greater harmonies; here the human soul rediscovers its essential connection to matter.
“Cultivation,” “care,” and “soul” – are all terms we can interchangeably employ to move from the literal Garden to figurative “cultivation” of the human “soul” or SPIRIT.
But we must always remember that nature has its own order and that human gardens do not, as one hears so often, bring order to nature; rather, they give order to our relation to nature. In the compulsion of capitalism and consumerist culture, this kind of “cultivation,” both literal and figurative, has been lost, it actually finds no place in our society.
And in fact there is no real national debate on “cultivation” forwarding the debate about climate change.
History shows just how central gardens and gardening are to the definition of our humanity. Gardens were once "places of self-discovery, of spiritual cultivation, of personal transformation".
Information:
Admission free
Until 21st November 201o
On Mondays and Thursdays 9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.; on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.
ESU Venezia sala polivalente "Nardocci" Dorsoduro 3861(Calle larga Foscari)
