Resources for artistic practices

The first overview of the artistic research of Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna, an Italian artistic duo focused on site specific art project with a sensible attitude to the landscape, in a full-bodied monograph that interweaves interpretive and documentary approaches, critical and theoretical reading with the regest and reconstruction of a broad itinerary, through fact sheets and a rich apparatus of images.

Forerunners of art practices ecologically engaged with environmental issues, Caretto/Spagna identify art as the field of a radical experience of openness, undisciplined research and engagement with the “things” of the world: the earth, seeds, people, stones, the museum, the river, the quarry, the tree, microorganisms. Bright Ecologies – Experiences, Forms, Materials traces and documents their 20 years of work, oriented by lines of research centered on care, transformation of matter and experiments on form, concretized in works, site-specific installations, workshops and residencies, actions and collective projects founded on encounter, process, gift, experiences of participation and co-authorship.

Bringing together contributions by artists, writers and theorists, Fieldwork for Future Ecologies addresses the role that art practice and art-based research plays in expanding notions of fieldwork. At once a handbook for research and practice and a philosophical speculation, this book offers the unique opportunity to explore ways of working within vastly diverse climates and terrains using image, sound, movement and other sensing technologies. It also offers more creative and speculative interventions into the idea and location of the ‘field’ itself.