According to the Anthropologist Richard Stamps, the history we study is not what really happens, but it is what has been recorded through words and images; history is recorded in the things we have created, in the tools we use, in the bulindings where we live, this is what we call the material culture, it’s part that surrounds us. Humans gave us cultural resources. When you destroy a non-renewable cultural resource, it’s gone forever.
Since 2013, in the territory of Puglia, in southern Italy, a deadly bacterium from a Costa Rica coffee’s plant, called Xylella, has killed over 21 million ancient olive trees. These iconic trees have played a vital role in shaping the region’s identity across centuries, influencing its communities, cultures, stories, languages, foods, and gestures. Nowadays the 40% of oil production has been lost, with it an enormous material culture linked to this tree is disappearing.
Investigating the devastating impacts of globalization and recognizing objects as carriers of narrative, this ongoing research project proposes a material investigation through the preservation of the disappearing tools used by farmers during the olive harvest, using the remaining materials of the contryside, charcoal and sawdust. The project aims to raise awareness about the threatened future of the olive tree in the region of Puglia, underlining how fragile is nature with the aim to carry memories and experiences of an historical tree.
For the material usesd to forge the objects, I developed a material made of sawdust and charcoal that does not require any firing. In this way the objects are made from only the materials that remain when an olive tree is burned or sawn in order to isolate and eliminate the bacterium. At the same time it is a biodegradable material that can be used in various fields as a newly engineered material.
Special thanks to Yassine Ben Abdallah and Maud Plantec Villeneuve