The Defense of Nature

“The Defense of Nature” is a 10-year project through which BoCA proposes to combine artistic creation and programming with the creation of a program to natural spaces. Over 10 years, plantings of new (natural and artistic) creations, curatorships, debates and conferences in different geographies of the national territory, will form a forest of thousands of artists and works of art. Based on the project by Joseph Beuys “7000 oak trees” (1982), BoCA designs a diverse and sustainable plantation, with a model that involves the collaboration of local populations, artistic communities and academic communities, to gather around the plantation of a forest of works of art.

“We can all be artists”: the iconic phrase by Joseph Beuys is called upon for this project as a participatory lever for elements of artistic and non-artistic communities. Anyone who considers himself an artist, in reference to this creative gesture of generating life, giving a title to his (natural) creation – the plantation of a tree – is invited to participate.

Joseph Beuys (1921-86) was, among other things, a political activist who claimed the power of art to change society. A “radical ecologist”, committed to investigating the role of art in creating new paradigms in the relationship between human beings and their natural environment. For Beuys, ecology was not limited to concerns about the environment and should exist in close relationship with our conceptions of society, economic theories, political systems, social practices, legislation, control of information and the media of pasta.

In addition to the annual plantings, BoCA calls for reflection and creation, commissioning artists and thinkers to create projects for these spaces over a period of 10 years.

Soon we announce new stages of this project.