Art as a call to Environmental Action : Back to the nature with Stefano Cagol

An interview with Stefano Cagol by Valentina Gioia Levy

How did you become interested in the Anthropocene, and how has this theme integrated into your previous artistic research?

There is no "before and after" in my research. The concept of the Anthropocene—the recognition of humanity’s irreversible impact on the planet—adheres to and merges with my vision.

I began developing a certain sensitivity toward these issues as a child, while living between Bern and Trento, absorbing ecological concepts that characterized the 1970s, such as pollution and the greenhouse effect. I vividly remember the historic emergence of the Green Party, Die Grünen, in Germany, which strongly opposed nuclear energy and fought to improve the quality of life in major cities. Many years later, I discovered that an artist, Joseph Beuys, was among its founders (I would have never imagined that, like all human endeavors, this political movement too would eventually face a deep crisis).

When Jeni Fulton, an English critic I met in Berlin, was the first to frame my research within the Anthropocene discourse about a decade ago and questioned me specifically on the subject, I wasn’t yet familiar with the term. However, it felt natural to answer her without hesitation, as if the concept had always been present in my thoughts. She was writing an essay for my solo exhibition Works 1995|2015 at the Galleria Civica di Trento – Mart. Shortly afterward, another essay that analyzed my work through the lens of the Anthropocene was published—Terra Incognita: Exhibiting Ice in the Anthropocene—written in NYC by Julie Reiss, an expert on the relationship between contemporary art and the climate crisis. This essay was included in the volume Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene.

How did the complex work We Are the Flood come to life? Where has it taken you so far?

The title We Are the Flood originates from the final statement of my previous project, The Time of the Flood (Beyond the Myth through Climate Change), which declared: We are global warming. We are pandemics. We are the flood. My works often evolve through a process of germination, expanding and branching out, and We Are the Flood is an emblematic example of my process-based practice. It is a multimedia work, a multi-site project, and a curatorial platform. It is literally a wave, a great force that subverts.

I developed We Are the Flood as a research and creation project by traveling to the four corners of the Earth—Egypt, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan, and Greenland—moving from deserts to tropical jungles and ancient ice formations. Supported by the Italian Council, I produced a series of serial performances and a body of new video works.

A particularly fruitful collaboration has been with MUSE – Museo delle Scienze in Trento, initiated through a dialogue with its founding director, Michele Lanzinger. Together with MUSE, We Are the Flood has evolved into a multi-year platform that bridges science and the humanities, giving rise to exhibitions, masterclasses, artist residencies, lectiones magistrales, and even a new collection. This collection was established with the support of the PAC – Piano Arte Contemporanea of the Italian Ministry of Culture, for which I curated both its foundation and the inaugural exhibition, which has just concluded.

The next stage, within the International Year of Glacier Preservation, will be the exhibition Come Ghiaccio (Like Ice) at Castel Belasi, a contemporary art center dedicated to ecological practice and thought, where I have served as artistic director since 2023.

Three books are dedicated to the various evolutions and aspects of the We Are the Flood project. One inaugurates a new MUSE editorial series and includes contributions by Andrea Viliani, Sofia Baldi Pighi, and Blanca de la Torre. It is still in progress. Meanwhile, a newly released book by Postmedia features a previously unpublished essay by a visionary philosopher with whom I have always felt a deep intellectual connection—despite having met in person only recently in Houston for the launch of his book Hell. I am speaking of Timothy Morton.

Where will this project take you in the future?

There will be many things in 2025, but for now, I can reveal just one: the exhibition Geografia e Mistero (Geography and Mystery), featuring myself and Marina Ballo Charmet in Alexandria, Egypt, this September. The project was made possible by winning the latest grant for the promotion of Italian photography abroad, awarded by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Curated by Alessandro Castiglioni, the exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura del Cairo and Art D'Égypte, and will be hosted at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Greco-Roman Museum. For the first time, this project will highlight the photographic aspect of my itinerant and multi-site method.