Is it possible to stop narrating the inevitable scenarios of the status quo if humanity does not change? Is it useful to stop and contemplate a work of art, suddenly becoming part of it? Can art be the food of the spirit and mind, especially when food is destined to be increasingly scarce? EUcarestia – No Food Tomorrow, the installation created by the {[(ethical)aesthetic]anesthetic} collective in collaboration with our Future Food Institute, answers yes to all these questions. EUcarestia is a contemplative exhibition, an artistic experience that enters the emotional sphere, that is, the one on which decisions, even decisions to change, most depend.
EUcarestia, etymologically “to give thanks,” is a cry of art for the Earth, of that Earth, represented by Mediterranean food, that is, the iconic food of the ancestral culture where the principles of nutrition and sustainable development, and regenerative models of integral ecology reside. Mediterranean food that in the work becomes crystals of light, the kind visible only under a microscope. Microscopic and yet precious. Indispensable even to avoid that famine, even in Europe, that EUcarestia warns us against, not with words, but with the emotional and immersive experience of art.
Oil, wheat, wine, and water: these are the ingredients of the exhibition. They are the key elements of the Mediterranean Diet, which is a masterpiece of balance between the health of humanity and that of the Planet. Sacred products, because they are the offspring of the custodians of Creation, who have used the techniques of agroecology, respected natural cycles, and regenerated the soil, just as is done in Cilento, in Pollica, one of the 7 communities emblematic of the UNESCO Mediterranean Diet in the world. Oil symbolizes peace; wine from experimental vineyards; water from the Mare Nostrum; wheat from regenerative agriculture, which becomes bread, a spiritual food par excellence.
The celebration of these elements occurs through their grafting within symbolically sacred architectures: a triptych of tabernacles, called NFTryptic, and a confessional, called coNFTessional.
The technology of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), became a tool of ethics and aesthetics, in the sacred underbelly of the Mediterranean whose current abundance we must not allow to dry up.
Technology thus becomes a tool of ethics, which, we believe, should happen in every context. This is why Future Food Institute signed in the Vatican, the Rome Call for AI Ethics, the document promoted by the Pontifical Academy for Life, already signed by large corporations such as Microsoft and IBM, and institutions such as FAO and the Italian government’s Ministry for Innovation.
It is the arm to prevent NFT from becoming No Food Tomorrow. This is what the installation tells us.
The exhibition is hosted in Bologna at the Future Food Living Lab in Piazza Verdi, and was created during Arte Fiera, amid World Interfaith Harmony Week, officially recognized by the United Nations as a way to “enhance mutual understanding, harmony, and cooperation among peoples.”
Inaugurating it in Bologna, in addition to me: Andre Guidot – Creative Director of MEDIATRAMA, Founder of {[(ethical)aesthetics]anesthetics}, Don Andrea Ciucci – Secretary of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Stefano Pisani – Mayor of Pollica, UNESCO Emblematic Community of the Mediterranean Diet, Antonio Parenti – Head of the European Commission’s Representation in Italy, and Luca Ferrua – Director of IL GUSTO of the Gedi Group.
EUcarestia feeds on art, with the warning that art is not enough, nor is technology. They are languages and tools to enhance the essential messages of life on the Planet today at risk. I restart the Mediterranean Diet. EUcarestia restarts from the Mediterranean Diet. And we are perfectly on time to point everyone, and quickly, in the right direction. The one that brings the soul back to the Mediterranean, its culture, and its eternal principles.