Pratiche di paesaggio: segni integrati, processi comunitari e forme-natura

The traditional theme of landscape has recently been reexamined within the field of aesthetics and has found renewed interest in the Italian debate (D’Angelo 2021), which would benefit from further interdisciplinary discussion. In particular, references to British urban studies on new rurality (Stringer 2018), informed by the anthropological reflections of Timothy Ingold (1993), have encouraged a rethinking of territorial transformations, viewing the landscape as a complex and dense network of human and non-human activities that have shaped it over time. Within the broad Italian artistic context, which has significantly expanded over the past decade, the interest in landscape has moved beyond its traditional representational dimension to become a field for reflecting on its social and economics implications. Artistic practices that have found in Puglia a privileged terrain of experimentation now stand as best practices for future approaches to landscape planning and preservation. The landscape of contemporary art in Puglia, exemplified by Casa delle Agriculture in Castiglione d’Otranto, the individual practice of Luigi Coppola, Lamia Santolina by Cosimo Terlizzi in Carovigno, and by projects oriented towards social and environmental design such as the Parco dei Paduli represents an exemplary case within the national and international artistic panorama. The complexity of these projects and the diversity of their approaches make the Apulian artistic scene of the last twenty years particularly distinctive for the variety of languages and methods through which it engages with landscape and territory, often supported by public programs and regional funding schemes. This essay focuses on several directions that, in the Apulian context, have emerged as models of territorial intervention.