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# 11

Who can own nature? And other questions of belonging...

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, where people can never fully be in charge. 

What people can share is not absolute rights over land and nature but the knowledge, affect, and social relations involved in living with them. 

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Empire’s salvage heart: Why diversity matters in the global political economy, 2012
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
  • What captured our attention
  • What if “Nature” does not exist
  • What if we acknowledge our relations with every entity
  • What if we invent an ecosystemic economy
  • What do you think?
  • Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
Collections that include this source
  • Imagine an Ecosystemic Europe
  • Imagine an Altereurope
Keep exploring
  • Cross Idea
  • Well, where does the Danube has its origin?  It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.  An old woman who l …
  • Giovanni Ambrosio. Ius Soli. Chapter one: waiting, passing, redemption. Soils: Tessuto non tessuto. 2018-
Giovanni Ambrosio Ius Soli Chapter 1. Soils, No Title. 2023
# 1

Giovanni Ambrosio. Ius Soli. Chapter one: waiting, passing, redemption. Soils: Tessuto non tessuto. 2018-

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
  • why did I collect this image
  • What if we see differently?
This image is part of the collection
  • Opacity of Images
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 …
  • Jone Kvie, Here, here VI
of our Imagination