Tiera Viva
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
In a world in constant motion, staying is what remains to do to save the marginal territories threatened by the impending abandonment. Tiera Viva aims to counter depopulation by favoring the stay in the territory of Carnia through the revaluation of what is present by the use of a Living Archive made with and for the community. A space imagined to raise awareness, encourage the exchange and dialogue on the present of the territory while co-designing new futures and collective practices of care.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
Tiera Viva aims to encourage the restanza, the choice to remain, in the territories of Carnia through the creation and the use of a Living Archive. In the last thirty years, the depopulation of the high lands considered marginal compared to urbanized areas has considerably intensified, leading masses of people to abandon their native places. Thus the land, a symbol of nourishment and life, which over the centuries has guaranteed the survival of peoples by representing one of the most important sources of wealth and sustenance, has lost all value. Carnia is a territory that has founded its history and culture in its own lands, giving life to traditions, stories, proverbs, rural practices and gestures, identifying a whole community. One of the solutions to counter depopulation is deciding to stay, or to arrive, thus re-inhabiting the marginal places of Carnia by giving new values and creating new relationships and practices of care to what is present and that most identify the rural territory: the land. Tiera Viva, from the Friulian dialect living soil/land, is praise to the land shaped in an interactive Living Archive made with and for the community. The aim of the project is firstly to collect things related to the territory and to the land such as local seeds, natural materials, stories, witnesses, visions, and perspectives about the current territory situation and the future becomings. Then, the archive wants to become an aggregation space that can be used by the community to raise awareness, experience, exchange and dialogue on the themes linked to the land and its multiple values such as agriculture, tradition and innovation, the local biodiversity, the coexistence with other living beings and the use of the land. In addition, through itinerant events and workshops to be organized all over the territory, it will be possible to involve the entire community by creating new possible relations with their own territory giving shape to a new rural Alpine community.
Key objectives for sustainability
For centuries the natural world has embedded several values becoming an important social, cultural and economic resource for the Alpine territories. These values, which once identified entire communities, and the deep gratitude towards the nature that surrounded human beings, have been lost in the meanders of time, marking a profound division between the natural world and the human one. At the same time, it seems that the natural world has the special ability to strengthen the sense of belonging in those marginal areas through the identification that humans feel for the rural landscapes of their territories shaped by the interaction between humans and nature. For that reason, the project aims to recreate a sense of belonging by giving new values to what is present in a specific territory, making nature itself the reason to stay. Thus, the creation of a space, currently non-existent, and the activation of events and workshops dedicated to the themes of the land, would lead the community not only to re-evaluate nature and its territory but also to create new relationships able to deviate from the mere exploitation and human-purpose use. Starting from what is present, from the knowledge rooted in these lands merged with modernity, without the pretense of upsetting an entire territory for economic purposes, could be the key to guaranteeing the survival of these communities. The Living Archive will be able to highlight natural aspects of the territory by now underestimated or forgotten, leading them to be the real protagonists of the change desired by the community, shifting the attention from the needs of the single to the needs of the collectivity made of humans and more-than-human livings. At the same time, the archive will be able to sensitize and educate the community on issues related to the more-than-human world by giving special importance to the local biodiversity to be preserved for its ability to identify, enrich and distinguish communities and territories.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The themes dealt with in the project are often presented to the public in the form of conferences or formal meetings which, if on the one hand, they convey clear information, on the other, they do not allow to reach the entire community. Moreover, the relationship between the speaker/expert and the individual becomes formal and detached, creating uncomfortable situations and discouraging egalitarian exchanges. One of the project’s aims is to move away from the classic information imagery by creating a dynamic, informal and comfortable space that leads the community and the individual to have a positive experience while feeling predisposed to dialogue on controversial topics. Furthermore, Tiera Viva’s archival space will be thought to facilitate interactions and dialogue through items designed to inform by providing inputs on a given theme and, at the same time, welcome new perspectives and visions from the community. In parallel, the aesthetics and design conceived for the entire space, whether digital or real, will be able to enhance the collected materials in a different way, becoming communicative elements themselves. This will allow to give them the right importance they deserve, highlighting all their characteristics and values. The aesthetics of the space and of the project, in general, will thus create a sense of identification and connection with the issues addressed, recognizable from the first impact. Finally, this will allow establishing a sense of cohesion between community and territory where the project will be a link and a catalyst for change, and, ideally, attract the attention of those furthest away from the rural world.
Key objectives for inclusion
Relationships are at the heart of the community life of a village and beyond. The exchange between people, in fact, gives power to the community and to their own perspectives, and the effort on bringing a place to be fertile ground for new and concrete encounters is fundamental to raising abandoned territories. Moreover, cooperation was at the center of the villages’ life, and it has likely still the same role in shaping new opportunities in marginal places such as Carnia. Giving power to the community would mean overturning the current situation that has given everything in the hands of institutions and governments that are always too distant to be able to create a durable impact. In fact, communities must reconsider their power, regain authority, re-identifying themselves with their place, creating a proactive unicum able to guarantee stability and certainty. The Tiera Viva project aims at a total involvement of the community, always kept too far from debates on its own territory or too uninformed to feel part. A community, that of Carnia in particular, is often defined as fragmented and skeptical. In doing so, the community will be called to be the protagonist of the change through the use of the Living Archive considered as an aggregation space where to exchange, dialogue and feel part of a wider community. The Living Archive and the correlated events, in fact, will be the ideal space and time where people can co-design their possible futures and practices of care towards the territory, while expressing opinions and concerns about the present state of affairs, deciding how to interact with the archive itself. Participation will allow creating moments of aggregation between different groups, coming from different valleys and landscapes, defining new possible encounters and cooperation, with the final aim to create solid synergies capable of keeping the territory alive.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
In the Tiera Viva concept, the environmental sustainability, the functional aesthetics and the community's inclusion are perfectly combined in order to strengthen people’s sense of belonging in the highlands, and not only. Nature, people and design are the protagonists of the project thanks to their potential to be combined in different forms and with different objectives, remaining inseparably one entangled to the other. Nature is the first real protagonist of the project, enhanced through a functional aesthetic designed to restore or give new value to what has been, for many, forgotten with the final aim of reconnecting humans to the more-than-human world, through the use of a Living Archive. At the same time, the openness, dynamism and lability that underlies the concept of a Living Archive provide for continuous interaction between the community of a given place and the archive itself, tracing a link with the territory in which the archive is located. In doing so, every item which will be present in the archive or in a workshop will be thought and designed to facilitate this interaction and enhance exchange among the community and the territory itself, through the archive used as a tool of aggregation and binder. The interaction between the more-than-human world and humans, who are able to shape and define the values of the natural worlds, become then the catalyst of a new form of relationship(s) that are entangled in the territory, triggering a transformation where design is seen as a mediator. At the same time, community participation will be enhanced to ensure an equitable transformation involving as many people as possible, guiding them to plan their own preferable community's future. Individuality will thus be set aside to recreate a sense of social cohesion and trigger moments of sharing and synergistic cooperation aimed at the good of the entire community and territory.
