< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > project background</h1>
The 2020 International Garden Festival officially opened last May at chaumont-sur-le-Loire. And one of the amazing works is the work of Vazio Bergoglio. S/A (Vazio S/A') paysage de Feu, an environmental art installation made from Carrado.
Chaumont, the venue of this international garden festival, is a castle built five hundred years ago on the banks of the Loire Valley, which has long been internationally renowned as "the world's laboratory in the field of garden and contemporary landscape design creation". The Loire Valley, where it is located, is inscribed on the UNESCO Heritage List as a french inland region that embraces excellence and splendor, famous for its ancient Renaissance castles.
In February of the same year, Vazio After more than 9,000 kilometers of travels in Brazil and France, the "Landscape of Fire", which was split into more parts, finally traveled thousands of miles to the Castle of Chaumont, where the final assembly was completed.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Serado</h1>
Cerrado, the second largest ecoregion in Brazil, is a savanna distributed in the hinterland of Brazil's interior with a total area of about 1.5 million square kilometers, more than twice the size of France; its biodiversity accounts for one-third of Brazil's biodiversity combined, accounting for 5% of the world's flora and fauna species, and is the source of water that makes up the country's three main hydrological basins (Aragua/Tocandins, San Francisco and Paraná/Paraguay).
Unfortunately, because Cerrado is a savannah that is seen only as a gathering place for barren vegetation biomes and an expanded reserve area for agricultural areas; therefore, Cerrado is not fully and carefully protected in terms of law; unlike the Amazon and Atlantic Forests, Cerrado is not listed as a legacy of the Federal Constitution, although its biodiversity is considered one of the richest 25 species on earth – and this figure, even in the case of the savannah, It is also the most abundant.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > garden</h1>
"Paysage de Feu" is the designer's advocacy and proposal for the Chaumont International Garden Festival – because the theme of this year's Garden Festival is "Return to the Earth", with "The Destruction of the Celado" as the motto of the project. Over the past few months, the eyes of the world have turned to the burning of the Amazon forest fires, while the Cerrado grasslands have continued to be destroyed as soybean farms and cattle and sheep pastures, without any country speaking out for it or hearing any international repercussions.
The Jury of the International Garden Festival awarded the "Paysage de Feu" and called it a protected area at the foot of Sierra da Moeda, through the collection of trimmed branches and burned logs, and aesthetic design and integration of the art installations; it is worth mentioning that the Sierra da Moeda Mountain is close to another one also by Varzio Moeda. Architectural works designed by S/A (Vazio S/A'), Cerrado House.
The installation of paysage de Feu is a metaphor for cruelty and desolation by arranging a series of combinations and arrangements of branches from the Cerrado, as if a slaughtered animal were hanging in a refrigerator, and as a "posthumous botanical garden" of plants found in Minas Gerais, Goyas and Bahia. In principle, the Paysage de Feu is a "dead" garden of inverted plants.
On the other hand, in addition to the obvious reference to "slaughterhouse", another meaning of the garden is to emphasize that the Serrado is a biome whose roots are much larger than its branches. The vegetation of the Cerado is a drought-tolerant species, and their roots stick out very deep into the ground to survive tenaciously, which is why they are called "terrestrial plants" rather than "aerial plants" – even without organs such as eyes and ears, they can still explore the dark, static underground world, and their powerful roots make these trees amphibians, connecting the earth with the air, and continuing to nourish their own light-seeking leaves (Emanuele Coccia) in the mysterious underground world ，2016）。 It is in the depths of the extremely acidic and useless soil of the Serrado that they have a life that no other creature can survive and convert everything they come into contact with into energy and nutrients.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the landscape of "fire"</h1>
On a technical level, the distortion of branches is explained by the "burning of root-tip meristems." All plants have an apical meristem, also known as a growth zone, and a comparatively inactive secondary meristem region, which only works when the apical meristem dies; and with the occurrence of the Cerrado periodic fire, the meristem at the apex of the plant is burned out, and then the secondary meristem is activated and begins to grow in another direction. Even when researchers analyze seeds that germinate only after burning, and even analyze bark with astonishing thickness — it can be understood as the self-protection mechanism of the plant itself against fire, and how to explain accidental fires caused by natural causes is well documented.
If the bending and complex shape of the branches here is due to natural fires, then it can be said that it presents the result of a survival ability of plants to adapt to the environment destroyed by fire - people can get the composition of Serado's biome: the current "fire" landscape actually includes two types of "fire-resistant" vegetation: fire-resistant, passive spontaneously combusted plants, such as complex twisted trees, and active spontaneously combusted plants composed of species regenerated by fire, such as wild grasses.
In summary, the "Paysage de Feu" symbolizes a savannah "floating" in the cold, sandy land of the Loire Valley, where there are still many living beings, far more than those who died in the fire. It gives more profound meaning to the Serrado, its trees, and the fire through a matrix of branches that are inverted up and down.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > collected</h1>
The material for the Fire Landscape installation was collected in the town of Moeda, Minas Gerais, and species identification was completed with the assistance of biologist Barbara Pacheco. Throughout the process, not a single tree was moved or removed, and all the branches were obtained with the help of workers in the area, through simple pruning—they knew to be able to collect them according to the most widely known name of all the vegetation of the steppe. These plants include: bergamot, powdery mildew, Serado angustifolia, Hornworm, Loofah, Barbarimang, Goosefoot, and Gomera. They are all typical plants of the Cerrado in Minas Gerais.
Floor plan of the "Landscape of Fire" (Paysage de Feu).
Side view of the "Paysage de Feu" (Landscape of Fire).
Basic information about the project
Project Name: Landscape of Fire
Artist: Lazio S/A
Project area: 200 sqm
Site area: 200 sqm
Year of completion: 2020
Number of layers of the device: 1