“I was grazing the sheep in the Corgnaleto ginepraia. I looked at Rialbero and thought: Carducci found this impetuous torrent very beautiful and interesting. Why don't I try to write some verses too? In attentive observation, the verse comes.” Ettore Monelli, poet-shepherd. Collagna, 1907-1974.
Ettore Monelli, shepherd, farmer and poet, as an adolescent, accompanied himself with his voice, in the infinite times of the transhumance of the flocks, between the Reggio Apennines and the Maremma, forming with his grandfather and the adults who instructed him in the reading of the Divine Comedy. of Gerusalemme Liberata and other classics, interpreted by heart. Monelli's happy verse («…He runs alive among the dead stone / and as he descends / crashes between stone and stone / milk froth, it seems that he carries…") transmits the necessary emotion to us but, as happens with the most significant expressions, it becomes a pedagogical method, indicating the ways of observing the world, then of drawing and writing, which give concreteness to the imagination, up to the necessary comparison with the other, to compose a theater that can restore an elevated image of life. Some questions from which he drew motivation could arise from these considerations, constituting himself in 2006, the collective Rural District/art and concrete initiative, with the intention of combining aesthetic experiences and rural sensibility, representing them between the Lombard territory and the Reggio province.
In fact, perceiving reality as a useful adaptation to the "spectacle" opens up a wide field of paths with conspicuous potential, of which traditional rural culture can become a convincing metaphor, encouraging reflection on the world, on man, on the meaning of existence and on his relationship with nature. Could the idea of a design connected to rural culture contribute to a path of growth and awareness? Would the emotional and subtle levels within which the experience take place find references in the concrete and natural condition of rurality and its extensive environment? And what contributions would derive from the association of rural ways with a total and engaging art, mirror of an aesthetic life, but above all of an aesthetic feeling of things, perhaps the only one capable of removing us from the dissonances and imbalances of the contemporary time?
It now seems that only material, immaterial and technological cultural tools influence, even jointly, the social environment, profoundly marking the common feeling, favoring new profiles and mentalities.
It would then be necessary to move in harmony with these elements, deepening, stimulated by creative immediacy, by intuition, better if qualified by the specific datum of an absolute fidelity to the Earth. It then happens that in historical periods marked by atmospheres of crisis and malaise, the search for answers regarding the themes of the person, individuality, limits and possibilities is strengthened and rurality could truly become a paradigm, an ethical path, in aiming for both the sustainability of production and the aptitude to open up to any "process" that can contribute to the renewal of socio-economic forms and also of political ones.
The idea of an aesthetic modality, therefore, in assuming, if possible, even more appropriate roles with respect to an art weakened by commodification and a culture ever closer to an industrial vision of cultural consumption.
John Nicolini. For an ethics and an aesthetic of sustainability. (for Collective Rural District art and concrete initiative). Cover image: Collective rural district concrete initiative, "sense of measure"”, Varese, Cloister of Voltorre, 2010
