The project brings together the physical realization of costumes representing natural entities and genii locorum with a ritualistic approach to photography as a kind of audienceless performance (rite). The path of the travel is determined by archaeological and ethnological curiosity, and becomes a search for healing both of the people involved and of the places and beings surrounding our explorations. We strive to create an abstract connection with the ancient past, when the feeling of a collective mind and an animistic picture of reality gave higher meaning to the natural world.

Every item used belongs to the area of the setting, and is selected also on the base of its symbolical, chemical, ethnological or magical properties. The single elements are then combined using various arts and crafts, mostly in the site where they were found, which is also chosen with and an eye to archaeology, astronomy, (pre)history and geomancy. The different qualities of places and objects are deeply (enough) researched to help us get a feeling for their histories, meanings and energies. It’s a different look into lands of travel and exploration, but most importantly into areas we are supposed to know well: in fact we miss a deeper connection and understanding even of our own home places, and indeed of the very concept of place.

To amplify the subtle frequencies of nature and make them resonate with our modern minds, we try to restore long time forgotten channels, often employing a variety of techniques of archaic and magical inspiration: from forged talismans to petroglyphs, from sounds and words of invocation to psychedelic experiences and not-so-coded rituals, whatever was once used to summon unseen energies is recovered in an attempt to synchronize our brains with the waves of the landscape itself.

We are making a statement about the unbearableness of our culture and its empirical exploitation of the natural world, reclaiming the symbiosis between man and nature as a necessary feature for the development of human beings and communities. Our society’s struggle to determine itself as a separate entity from the earth cannot bring any good: the spirits are still there lurking in the wild, and they are more powerful than we may be able to remember. These pictures aim to be a memento of man's smallness in front of the forces of nature: after many centuries dominated by the typically human anxiety to increase his control and power over them, we feel the time has come to celebrate Gaia and the Cosmos. We must revise our relation to the natural intelligences, humbly acknowledging their power over us as individuals as well as our interconnectedness with them, recognizing and fulfilling the scale symmetry between macro and microcosm which is the foundation of the universal equilibrium and of our very existence.
Spirits
Inspiration
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