# 1
Every image in the Alterlibrary collection is intended as a quote, an excerpt of a larger discourse. But every image also stands as a matter that could undergo a series of operations and alterations. Therefore, images are renewable sources.
Operations: Extraction and Collection. Image alteration: none.
This is an original image from the long-term documentary archive Ius Soli, which explores the archaeology of the present in the Mount Vesuvius Red Zone. The so-called Red Zone encompasses 25 municipalities and could potentially transform into a vast archaeological site in the event of an eruption. The image is a digital file printed on transparent plexiglass.
Tessuto non tessuto is a black fabric used in archaeology to demarcate and protect archaeological ruins after excavation for preventive purposes. The particular tessuto non tessuto in this photograph punctuates the soils of Mount Vesuvius’s so-called Red Zone, around the towns of the inland cities home to small clothing industries. Dumps of manufacturing remains are illegally left all over the soil to avoid the normal waste treatment process. The stratification of industrial waste treatment issues is depicted in its first layer.
Invitations to contemplate
This image is part of the collection
Keep exploring
- But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, wh …
why did I collect this image
Ius Soli delves into the spaces of a complex ecosystem, documenting their physical and cultural landscapes while reflecting on the fragility of living in the shadow of Vesuvius. In the image Tessuto non tessuto, the entanglement of the soil itself and the waste that contaminates it is depicted. So, a small portion of soil in a complex volcanic zone can tell about the stratified and complex status of an ecosystem. All kinds of matters are entangled. There’s no possibility of depicting a timeless Nature.
of our Imagination
