The Foreigner Planted a Seed
Migration Discourse in
The Artistic-Anthropological Projects of Leone Contini
Yahui Wang s2110067 Supervisor: Dr. S. A. Shobeiri MA Thesis Arts and Culture Contemporary Art in a Global Perspective Leiden University 2019-2020
Displaced, uprooted, migratory people seem to have dwelled in the penumbra of European history, people living in the shadow of places where they do not belong. But I call immigrants and refugees ‘today’s settlers’ to indicate that old concepts of belonging do not fit present realities. Migrations are acts of settlement and of habitation in a world a divide of Otherness, a world in which borders no longer separate human realities.
— Saskia Sassen, Guests and Aliens
The familiar and the alien are constantly exchanging places —and this global ballet cannot be stopped at will, because this constant exchange of places offers the only way to distinguish the familiar from the alien that remains open to us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the past three years, I have had the greatest joy to follow various wonderful courses in the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University. Throughout my Pre-Master and Master’s programmes, the knowledge and enthusiasm shared by the teachers have nurtured an inspiring starting point for this research.
I want to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Ali Shobeiri, for promptly taking over the supervision work in June and generously sparing his holiday time to give me advice and solid feedback which have been crucial in the process of completing this thesis.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my previous thesis guide Prof. dr. Robert Zwijnenberg for his kindness, openness and his intellectual support in the beginning when I was riddled with doubt.
Heartfelt thanks also go to my beloved one, Bram Fritz, whose protection and understanding gave me the strength to overcome many difficult times in the past years. He designed the amazing cover of this thesis.
Lastly, I owe my parents 王跃华 and 刘怡欣 the deepest gratitude for unconditionally supporting me to study in the Netherlands and always encouraging me in life with their wisdom and love.
CONTENTS ABSTRACT 5 INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER 1 Disruptions and Frictions: Dichotomy of the Native and the Invasive 13 1.1 The Predicament of Prato, Tuscany 13 1.2 The Invention of the Native 22 1.3 Formulation of the Invasive 26 CHAPTER 2 Anthropological Fieldwork as Art Production 31 2.1 Analogy Between Two Disciplines: Anthropology and Art 31 2.2 Fieldwork and Multi-Sitedness 33 2.3 Fieldwork as a Long-term Process 40 2.4 Fieldwork and the Other 42 CHAPTER 3 Cultivating the Garden of Hybridity 49 3.1 Botanic Invasions 49 3.2 Invasion and Contamination 57 3.3 “We are all strangers:” the Lessons of Migrant Subjectivity 59 CONCLUSION 67 ILLUSTRATION SOURCES 71 BIBLIOGRAPHY 73 FURTHER RESEARCH 79
ABSTRACT
As a result of globalization, ever-intensifying migration and rampant populism, the mediatic and governmental response to migrants is a damning one in many parts of Europe. This research investigates how the artistic-anthropological projects of Leone Contini craft a counter-discourse of migration. Dealing mostly but not exclusively with Chinese migrants in Italy, it explores how the invasive/native antithesis is constantly being deconstructed by the art, both in relation to both vegetation and humans. To do so, it uses a discourse analysis methodology to survey the use of language but also to show how artistic practices can create discourse. The deconstruction relies on an anthropological approach, where multi-sitedness, complexity, long-term processes and collaboration with the Others are seen as the necessary preconditions. The research concludes by showing how the hybrid, nomadic, unsettled subjectivity of the migrants contaminates the identity of all participants in a generative way.
INTRODUCTION Each year, countless people are displaced to seek work or new homes. The diverse conditions and processes under the notion of global migration all share one aspect: they are acute. It is notable that immigration affairs are intensively contested on the European Union political agenda. Traditional concerns associated with mass migration involve political disturbance, social antagonism, cultural conflict and economical rivalry.1 When facing the complex and continuing global migration problems, the truth that extreme nationalist politicians and their raging supporters tend to neglect or deliberately overlook is that mass movements of people were a usual practice long before the birth of the nation state.2 While extensive literature
tries to grapple with the problem of power asymmetries, there are also global migration scholars espousing the positive aspect of human movements over cultural boundaries. The main assumption here is that in most cases, through interaction with others, migrants can bring in new ideas and spread new habits. In such a way, reciprocal innovation, social change and capital modification are more likely to happen.3 In an increasingly globalized world, the scales of circulation and rearrangement of lives, both human and non-human, are massive. Different vegetal species and eating habits have been uprooted by early world explorers and current increasing immigrations. Once landed, these newcomers were always hostilely treated by the natives. In some situations, there can be violent conflicts. Nonetheless, as time passes, the once ‘intrusive’ foreign vegetation will eventually acclimatize and hybridize into ‘new natives.’ As sociologist Claire Wallace points out, the issue of globalization has oftentimes been discussed on a rather broad level as worldwide communicational flows instead of zooming in on specific instances with details.4
My research will focus on artist Leone Contini’s long-term project TuscanChinese (ToscoCina 2011-2014) concerning the Chinese diaspora in
northern Italy, which includes a series of sub-projects, such as Km0 (2012) and The Diaspora Courgettes (2013); as well as his more recent project Foreign Farmers (2018). My interest in 1 Talani, Globalisation, Migration, and the Future of Europe: Insiders and Outsiders, 3. 2 Ibid., 1. 3 Lucassen and Lucassen, "Migration Over Cultural Boundaries,” 523-524. 4 Wallace, Crossing Borders, 185.
his works stemmed from seeing this latter work in reality at the 12th edition of Manifesta Biennale in Palermo, Sicily. In one of the three main sections, the “Garden of Flows,” at the Palermo Botanical Garden (Orto Botanico di Palermo), I first had the chance to encounter Leone Contini’s work. The installation consisted of a vegetable garden: a pergola under which he, alongside a few immigrant farmers, planted over 50 types of foreign seeds. I was struck by the mix of simplicity and relevance in his art: by utilizing plain foods and vegetable matter, he manages to create a multifaceted practice reflecting on complex issues of mass migration, globalization, intercultural encounters and regional power relations in a way which institutionalized art would struggle to. His process-oriented body of work is, however, heavily influenced by research-based, ethnographic and participatory contemporary artistic practices.
This inquiry started from my interest in how Contini negotiates these globalized mass movements in his practice and how he manages to create frameworks for regarding migration apart from the hostile populist ones. With TuscanChinese and Foreign Farmers as case studies, the main research question that steers this thesis is: How does Leone Contini reconfigure dichotomous ideas of native and invasive in migrational intercultural frictions through an anthropological and artistic approach? The deconstruction and reconfiguration of this dichotomy has highly relevant implications for the context of mass migration. I will show how Contini’s art develops discourses and ways of regarding the Other and coexisting with them without being bordered by nations. Instead, his art creates a space ‘invaded’ by the migrant subjectivity and by hybridity in a way that causes shifts in the very concept of identity for all people who come into contact with it. Ideas like the native and the invasive get undermined time and time again in favor of a fluid interrelationality. According to art critic Thomas McEvilley, the art of today should not only map and record the past, but also offer glimpses and signs of the oracular unknown future, either disquieting or hopeful.5 This research aims at investigating how the artistic methodology
realized by Leone Contini can offer a deeper understanding of societal categories and dynamics and therefore inform our options for a better future. It also seeks to offer a better understanding of how agriculture and food can be a part of the process to rethink the
problems caused by cross-national immigrations on a local level. The main relevance of the art itself as well as of this research unfolds primarily on a societal level. Even if it provides only a specific case study in one restricted location and even if the art itself only touches a limited number of people, I argue that it can offer new ways of thinking and acting in society. This power attributed to art and academia is backed up by various theorists: according to art historian Boris Groys, whether an artist has political intention or not, the art itself can reflect the formation of community independently. As he writes, “contemporary art practice demonstrates the position of the alien in today’s culture in a much more adequate way than the standard political discourse does.”6 While this view attributes excessive agency to art
practice to be more effective than politics, it is still relevant that artworks can contribute to socio-political discourses in meaningful ways. Cultural studies professor Nikos Papastergiadis also provides a hopeful view of how art can be a guide for re-imagining political and ethical frameworks around globalization and immigration. He bases this belief in the force of art on Benedict Anderson’s assessment that artists were instrumental in building national consciousness in the 19th century, so it would not be a stretch to imagine their involvement in building a global, post-national form as well.7 Placed in this particular genealogy, it seems convincing that art can contribute to overarching political frameworks. Papastergiadis claims that artistic imaginaries are certainly not to be used for policy-making or regulations, but instead they can offer ethical guides as to how to relate to the Other, how to act, pushing the boundaries of what is considered the norm.8 Overall, it backs up his belief that even “personal involvement at a micro level would facilitate global change.”9 The theoretical framework of the research brings together an incredibly varied range of perspectives to create a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach. In order to survey the invasive/native antithesis and to see its societal implications, no single domain is fit to offer the full answer. This is the case because of the positioning of the art and the research question: already at the intersection of a wide variety of disciplinary fields. Attempting to narrow down the approaches would lead to an unfortunate poverty of perspective and a 6 Groys, “Europe and Its Others,” 181. 7 Papastergiadis, “The Role of Art in Imagining Multicultural Communities,” 49. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 55.
denial of the fundamentally and fruitfully interconnected realms of ecological system, anthropological fieldwork, artistic thinking and social-political analysis. I find it necessary to draw liberally and mix sources from a wide variety of authors in the aforementioned fields to offer a complete picture of the complex discursive working of Contini’s art. First of all, my inquiry uses migration studies as a base. Initially more established in the United States, this field has effectively bloomed in Europe in the last 30 years, with many different surveys trying to understand migration patterns in Europe.10 The focus of this field is a wide one ranging from micro perspectives of individual migrant actors, communities or local contexts - which will mostly be favored in this thesis - to macro perspectives of host nations, markets, policy-making and institutions. This is a suitable disciplinary route for tackling the research question because despite the obvious centrality of the discourse of human migration proper, this generous header can accommodate several related issues like invasive plants, gastro-nationalism, identity and belonging. Moreover, is a field that brings together scholars from social sciences, law, economics, political science, history and postcolonial studies, which also instantly backs up my interdisciplinary positioning. In their 2015 volume Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield point out the fragmentary nature of the field: theoretical viewpoints, conceptual toolkits, methodologies and assumptions vary widely depending on all the disciplinary backgrounds of people who feed into migration studies.11 They see this as a real issue, and
while they accept that “it may be too much to hope for a unified theory of migration,” they suggest that there is a dire need for more cross-disciplinary dialogue.12 Brettell and
Holifield’s plea informs my choice of a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach relying on migration studies.
Besides the main positioning of migration studies, this research necessarily draws on the related fields of sociology and political studies as well in order to describe migration flows and to work with concepts like nationalism and populism. Anthropological studies and ethnography also feature heavily, as the whole of the second chapter interrogates how Contini draws on these fields in order to inform his art and how they influence his
10 Zapata-Barrero and Yalaz, Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies, 1. 11 Brettell and Hollifield, Migration Theory, 2.
relationships and practices. Moreover, the idea of invasive/native would not be fully developed without bringing in environmental and conservation studies, food studies and even a few perspectives from biology. This unlikely intervention will prove immensely helpful to disentangle the relationships between vegetation and human elements, especially when it comes to migration. Lastly, art criticism and art historical sources are obviously necessary for some perspectives on how the artworks function and they complete the interdisciplinary approach. This varied framework is all the more important given the aspiration of the art as well as my research to comment on contemporary society in a consequential way.
The main methodology I will be employing in this research is discourse analysis. The concept of discourse was popularized by Michel Foucault and it entails a particular way of understanding and knowing the world that is being communicated, always existing within various entanglements of power.13 Discursive structures involve particular oral or written
utterances but also more general patterns of speech or choice of certain vocabularies. Discourse analysis is different from simple textual analysis because it presupposes that communication is ideological; according to Gabriele Griffin, “language is invested, meaning that language is not a neutral tool for transmitting a message.”14 I will also be following
Griffin’s preferred Critical Discourse Analysis as methodology, as opposed to other strains like the Foucauldian Analysis. According to her, the critical strain is most focused on how discourses are socially-constructed themselves but at the same time construct and shape reality.15 This type of analysis is based on a view of discourse as historically situated and ideologically invested but most importantly, based on the fact that discourse has the power to change the world. This approach is ideally suited for my research. The dominant strain under critical analysis in my work will be migration discourse, defined by Susana Martínez Guillem as “the study of the specific and distinct communicative practices that accompany the phenomenon of migration.”16 This is justified by the aforementioned proximity between 13 Rose, Visual Methodologies, 137. 14 Griffin, “Discourse Analysis,” 91. 15 Ibid., 96. 16 Martínez Guillem, “Migration Discourse,” 108.
human migration proper and related issues about invasive species, food, nationalism and identity. The dominant migration discourse will therefore encompass these secondary ones. In order to analyze migration discourse, throughout this thesis I will bring up various examples from the media coverage of (mostly Chinese) immigrants in Italy. The analysis will deal with patterns of phrasing and word use and not grammatical ones, for example. I will create a picture of the journalistic and governmental discourse around newcomers and show how it creates reality by shaping the general attitude towards them as well. In opposition with this, I will also present the discourse put forward by Contini and his art. I will use a few of his own writings and interviews of him as primary sources, as well as online reviews of his artworks from different audiences and participants. By using these sources, I will show how he creates a contrasting discursive structure to the previous one. By drawing on a framework inspired by the migrant subjectivity and his long-term anthropological experience, he manages to create a climate of relating to foreigners that sits in stark contrast with that of the media and the government. The discourse analysis will be supplemented by theoretical elements discussing the invasive/native trope in order to situate the findings. Another important methodological influence comes from art historian Lynda Nead who claims that art is also a form of discourse in itself. She creates an understanding of art defined not only by “visual images but knowledges, institutions, subjects and practices.”17 This addition has implications for discourse analysis: it enlarges its remit from only language to also include social practices that are based on and in turn create a specific view of the world. I will follow this route and also deal at length with Contini’s practices in the field and approaches to art, site-specificity and social relations. The analysis of his practices will show that they are in line with the vision of the world shaped by his utterances. Therefore, both his use of language and his practices are consistent with one coherent discursive position in relation to the invasive/native trope. The structure of this thesis develops across three main chapters. The first chapter provides a brief historical context of the Chinese community in Prato, one of the main groups involved in Contini’s work. Discourse analysis is foregrounded here, exploring their migratory and labor activities alongside the media portrayal and the governmental attitude
towards them. Chapter 1 finishes with a conceptual analysis, surveying the theoretical basis for the concepts of invasive and native, drawing on ecology, food studies and political theory. Chapter 2 relies very heavily on anthropology: it investigates how the concept of fieldwork helps Contini to create a deep, meaningful and complex relation with the site of the art and all of the collaborators he involves in the process. By using the artwork TuscanChinese and a few of its satellite events, it explores how artistic practices can be understood to construct discourse as well. I argue that the approaches presented here are a precondition for a successful deconstruction of invasiveness/nativeness. Lastly, Chapter 3 sees an extension, a growth from only dealing with the community in Prato. The case study Foreign Farmers involves immigrants from other places but still follows a similar logic like the one outlined in the Chinese case. The chapter brings together theories about ecological invasion, contamination and hybridity in order to allow for a more abstract, generalizing conclusion. It tackles the very heart of the issue, exploring how the hybrid, fluid subjectivities of the migrants Contini works with influence the artwork as well as its immediate environment. The last chapter is crucial as its conclusions about identity, interrelationality and the Other can easily be extrapolated to feed into a wider ethics of coexistence under globalization.
CHAPTER 1
Disruptions and Frictions: Dichotomy of the Native and the Invasive
Before delving deeper into the analytical part of Leone Contini’s artistic-anthropological projects, it is necessary to introduce the context of the locus Prato in Tuscany. This chapter begins with the facts at ground level by outlining the specifics of the Chinese migrant presence in this area. It traces the growth and dynamics of their community and it also begins to show the one-sided negative media and governmental response to their labor activities: the tension and frictions not only appear in the business field but also in the agricultural field. The following two subchapters give an overview of the dichotomous notions of nativeness and invasiveness respectively. They investigate how each of two ideas have been invented and formulated as well as how they go hand in hand with the rise of nationalism and populism. However, the overview does not simply describe the developments of the concepts, but already starts giving critical perspectives on them which will be useful for the analysis in Chapters 2 and 3. This current chapter draws on an incredibly wide range of perspectives in ecology, environmental conservation, migration and food studies, political science, and sociology in order to start pointing out the limitations of the invasive/native dichotomy and show how the antithesis is being questioned and re-examined in theory. 1.1 The Predicament of Prato, Tuscany
The fabric-making history in Tuscany can be traced back to the twelfth century. To the northwest of Florence, the Prato area has always been a hub for artisan industries, including shoemaking, leather production and textiles. The business model has always relied, even to the present day, on small but interconnected family workshops and mills. However, the operators behind the “Made in Italy” label are now being replaced, or rather this label is now heavily based on immigrant labor. This textile tradition of Prato bloomed into an industrial district (Fig. 1) and set the scene for an external labor injection to keep up with the production demands. After the post-World War II internal migration growth mainly fueled by Italians from the south, foreign immigrants started coming in to contribute to the fashion
industry too.18 As a result of this context, more than half of the population of Prato are immigrants, mostly domestic migrants but also a sizable community of non-Italians, mostly Chinese.19 Fig.1. The industrial area of Prato, in the heart of Tuscany, ©Gianni Cipriano, The New York Times, 2019. The wave of Chinese migration started in the 1980s, with thousands of people moving to Tuscany. The statistics show it has been an upward tendency up until the 2010s.20 Prato is thought to be one of the largest Chinese communities on the continent, with some sources claiming that Prato has “the second-largest Chinese population of any European city, after Paris.”21 Besides those from the Fujian province, the majority are from the Zhejiang province,
the city of Wenzhou specifically. Surrounded by mountains and the East China Sea, the 18 Denison et al., “The Chinese Community in Prato,” 4. 19 Bressan and Radini, “Diversity and Segregation in Prato,” 130. 20 Allegedly numbering around 200.000 in 2010, the Chinese in Prato are the largest ethnic group out of all the foreigners, making up 42% of that group. The demographic trend is a rising one, as between 2004 and 2010 the community grew by 119%. -Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2422. 21 D.T. Max, “The Chinese workers who assemble designer bags in Tuscany,” The New York Times, 9 April 2018. Accessed 16 June 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the- chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany
Wenzhou city is relatively isolated, yet well-known for its strong entrepreneurial sentiment.22 Over half of the Wenzhounese settled in Europe are in Italy, showing the
community spread of migration, with individuals helping others emigrate to the same area. This sometimes happens organically and at other times is the result of clandestine human trafficking networks.23 There is even a saying among immigrants: “In Europe, it doesn't
matter at all if you cannot speak English as long as you speak Wenzhounese (dialect).”24
Many sociological studies have shown the isolated nature of the Chinese communities abroad is the biggest barrier to genuine integration. The results of a survey of Chinese diaspora in Prato conducted by Huabing Xu in 2009 shows that almost all Chinese immigrants reside outside the old town, thus segregated from Italian society.25 Such a cluster
is around Via Pistoiese (Fig.2), a rundown previously-artisan area that was taken over by the Chinese.26 Through the years, they have built a “little China” community, nicknamed by
Italians as “Saint-Beijing.”27 The transformation they caused in the area was shocking for the older locals, while the younger locals embraced the increased dynamism of the area.28 Their alimentary habits play a crucial role to enhance the strong sense of community. In regard to their lifestyle, Xu especially points out that Chinese immigrants have hardly integrated into the local dietary culture. The Chinese in Prato become accustomed to Italian breakfasts, but lunch, dinners and feasts are still dependent on Chinese cuisine. Many famous Wenzhounese restaurants and their catering are even franchised in Prato.29 22 Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2423. 23 Denison et al., “The Chinese Community in Prato,” 4. 24 Xu, "Social Investigation on Chinese Immigrants in Prato, Italy," 36. 25 Ibid., 37. 26 Denison et al., “The Chinese Community in Prato,” 5. 27 Xu, "Social Investigation on Chinese Immigrants in Prato, Italy," 37. 28 Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2424. 29 Ibid.
Fig.2. “Via Pistoiese, a road in Prato,” ©Saman Sadeghi Afgeh, 2016. If in the 80s these migrants were all working to manufacture textiles for various local companies of the fashion industry, in the 1990s the dynamic shifted as the Chinese started setting up their own firms and workshops, making garments cheaper and faster than their Italian counterparts. The main area of activity started shifting for many in the Prato Chinese community in the 2000s. Increasing international competition in the textile sector, together with the global financial crisis of 2008 created a situation where a lot of people lost their employment.30 Faced with this issue, numerous Chinese immigrants shift from textiles to what Leone Contini calls “unexpected rural activities.”31 Many of them started small-scale, family-run farms all over the area on the Prato plain. Smaller activities often occur scattered in rural residual areas around the industrial section; bigger farms are usually developed on the abandoned rural plots, some used to be vineyards (Fig. 3).32 The model, just like with the 30 Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2420. 31 Leone Contini, “Our Gourds First,” 20 March 2018, Accessed 8 December 2019, https://schloss-post.com/our-gourds-first/ 32 Ibid. Many of these rural structures were abandoned in the late 1960s, after the end of the sharecrop system.
fashion workshops, stays family-based and community-based. Most of them are engaging in subsistence farming practices or market gardens.33 Since they have had to re-adapt their
skills to a different climate, they started to experiment by growing species known to them from China in the new Tuscan soil, such as bok choy, lotus root and various kinds of gourds etc. Their endeavors have been highly successful as, according to some estimates, up to 25% of the farmlands in the province are connected to the Chinese community.34 Fig.3. Leone Contini, “Epiphany,” TuscanChinese, 2015.
Their success, alongside a general anxiety around the intensification of the migration flows to Europe in the past decade, has aggravated a public climate of intolerance where the Chinese immigrants are generally perceived as invaders and competitors. Like in many other European countries, in Italy, the populist political ideologies have grown 33 Subsistence farming is an agricultural practice that involves growing vegetables and food crops on a small scale to meet the needs of a restricted community, without a lot of surplus production. A market garden involves a small area of crops or greenhouses which sells produce on a limited scale to individuals and businesses. 34 Anna Blundy, “View from Italy: The People’s Republic of Prato,” Prospect, 14 March 2017, Accessed 15 July 2020, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/view-from-italy-the-peoples-republic-of-prato
progressively since the mid 1990s. Sociologist Lucca Fazzi goes further to claim that “Italy is (...) today the European country in which populism has achieved the greatest success and has exerted the strongest influence on national policies.”35 The new political scenario is
related to the rising power of many extreme right-wing parties, the largest of which is the Northern League.36 Their rhetoric emphasizing the ‘invasive’ threat of the immigrants has
made a real impact on the local communities and fueled intolerance. Within this climate of intense anti-immigrant discourse generally, there is also backlash specifically against the Chinese community (Fig. 4). The public’s general reticence is based on three factors: their perceived illegality, their refusal to engage or integrate and their posing a threat to Italian industry.37 Their presence in Prato is often used as proof by right-wing politicians to support the idea of invasion and siege. Patrizio La Pietra from the quasi-fascist party Brothers of Italy, for instance, credits the Chinese with having “brought the district to its knees, eliminated thousands of jobs, and exposed countless families to hunger.”38 Such views abound in the mainstream media narration around this community. 35 Fazzi, "Social Work, Exclusionary Populism and Xenophobia in Italy, " 597. 36 Ibid., 595-596. 37 Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2420. 38 D.T. Max, “The Chinese workers who assemble designer bags in Tuscany,” The New York Times, 9 April 2018, Accessed 16 June 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the- chinese-workers-who-assemble-designer-bags-in-tuscany
Fig.4. Anti-China graffiti in Prato, ©Gianni Cipriano, The New York Times, 2019.
The general fear and anti-Chinese animosity are exercised in relation to the farms and their crops as well.39 By displaying threats to personal safety, fear can be easily and
frequently transformed to profitable political or commercial capital. The mass media, in turn, functions as a tool to constantly replenish the capital of fear, serving different political and marketing uses.40 The media coverage of the agricultural activities of the Chinese in Prato
revolve around phrases like: "illegal seeds," "irregular seeds," "genetic contamination," "danger for public health," "zero tolerance," "unauthorized shelters" "after the fashion, the Chinese conquer the fields."41 Moreover, when the journalists fail to recognize the vegetables
they resort to the genetically modified label, therefore capitalizing on the anxiety around genetic engineering. The seeds of suspicion are sown by captions in local Florence newspapers, such as “Abnormal vegetables: giant cabbages and <<modified>> zucchini” (Fig. 5). This feeds on misunderstanding and a fear of the unknown, which is directly classed as dangerous. A different strain of anti-Chinese farm discourse is exemplified by the heading: 39 The connections between the rhetoric around immigration and that of invasive plants will be explored in more detail in Subchapter 1.3. 40 Bauman, Liquid Times, 12. 41 Leone Contini, “Our Gourds First,” 20 March 2018, Accessed 8 December 2019, https://schloss-post.com/our-gourds-first/
“Dangerous Land: bargain prices and crops without rules, and again alarm for Chinese gardens” (Fig. 6). In this example the lack of trust in the Chinese is located in a social realm, couching intolerance in a concern about lack of regulation and unfair competition. Fig.5. “Abnormal vegetables: giant cabbages and modified zucchini,” Florence newspaper La Nazione, 2018 Fig.6. “Dangerous Land: bargain prices and crops without rules, and again alarm for Chinese gardens,” 2018.
This anxiety around unfair competition has directly fueled a rapid increase in governmental investigations and raids in the past few years.42 The damning media exposure
also serves to increase police seizures of farms that are deemed illegal. Contini notes how the media is quick to intervene after the state seizes or closes down a farm, for example. They normally offer swift and decisive verdicts using terms like “contamination, danger, criminality, clandestine, unfair, unauthorized, inhuman, unknown, suspected and infested.”43According to Contini, this happens again and again each year, usually escalating
when local elections are near.44 The confiscation of farms are disastrous for the families
because the farm is what they rely on primarily for survival.45 On one occasion in 2018, a
police raid not only uncovered irregularities in a farm in Campi Bisenzio, but also found people living inside the greenhouses. This led to the seizure of the entire farm area, with all its crops. The news article describing this event is illustrated with a picture of a police officer guarding the entry to a greenhouse (Fig. 7). His legs are apart and planted firmly in the ground, his arms on his hips confidently. His gaze is somewhere in the distance, resting over the fields that are now in the custody of the state and that he is tasked to protect. This picture is a small indication of the triumphalist official narrative. Confiscating people’s farms in this context is a win for public health, fair competition and even human rights. 42 Barbu, Dunford and Liu, “The Chinese in Prato,” 2420. 43 Leone Contini, “Our Gourds First,” 20 March 2018, Accessed 8 December 2019, https://schloss-post.com/our-gourds-first/ 44 Lecture “Leone Contini: Ethnographic Work and Creative Practices: Art, Anthropology and Poetics of Alterity” Part of “Anthropology, Art & Alterity, Panel 3: Alterity, Botany, and Biodiversity.” September 13, 2018. At Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Accessed 17 March 2020, https://www.hkw.de/en/app/mediathek/video/70594 45 Ibid.
Fig.7. “Campi seized Chinese vegetable garden dormitory,” January 2018. 1.2 The Invention of the Native Political scientist Claire Jean Kim, in her 2015 book Dangerous Crossings, offers an insightful analysis of disputes over the control and protection of native species. She provides a comprehensive understanding of how ecological species and human races mutually constitute power taxonomies. Her main intervention is to define and subsequently question the invasive/native trope claiming that alien species in an ecosystem automatically threaten the native ones. According to her, this is based on a fallacy of “equating native with best” instead of seeing native species merely as first-comers.46 To invent the core values of
nativism is to create a discourse about nature based on two key assumptions: that nature is a resource and a pristine space.47 Nature, in this sense, is compared to terra nullius,
untouched, passive, with no agents and subjects, merely an invisible background. As pointed out by Kim, this very instrumental look at nature is embraced by nativists.48 Moreover, the wording of environmental protection is deliberately set up to both cloak and advocate for 46 Kim, “The Optic of Ecological Harm,” 158. 47 Ibid., 141-142. 48 Ibid.
the instrumentalization of nature. The native species and their habitats act as nothing more than inventive deputies for human’s economic interests.49
Kim’s construction of nativism and native species in relation to plant life is merely an introduction; in order to really grasp the notion of the native, it is also useful to bear in mind its functioning within the sociopolitical realm.50 In this area, nativism is intimately connected
to nationalism. In his renowned book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson has reflected on the origins and meaning of nationalism. What Anderson means by describing a nation as ‘imagined’ is that most members of a nation today do not know each other’s names and they will never meet each other. And yet, they are able to picture an abstract solidarity in their minds and feel loyal to their nations in their role as natives born in a specific place. A nation is also imagined as a fraternal ‘community,’ bonded by comradeship, disregarding the truly existing exploitations and inequality that prevail.51 Such is the power of the idea of
being native to a place, to grant extremely powerful feelings of political belonging. Furthermore, Anderson points out that imagined communities could not be formed without the mass media.52 Various mass media formats play a key role in constructing shared
experiences among individuals of the nation and in doing so, they instill nationalistic ideology and reinforce commonalities among individuals. Without even having met the other person, these mediated shared experiences form the formation of a national identity that is permanently and publicly cultivated and reinforced. Thus, these imagined communities now become a reality.
Infused with nationalism, the radicalization of the biological and gastronomical nativism discourse has caused the emergence of so-called essentialism, gastro-nationalism, and gastro-populism. In Italy the tendency towards fetishism of native foodstuff is met with the imagined national community pushed by the far right and gives birth to a particularly aggressive form of gastro-essentialism. There is no doubt that food is generally 49 Kim, “The Optic of Ecological Harm,” 152. 50 Dictionary.com defines nativism as “the policy of protecting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants” or “the policy or practice of preserving or reviving an indigenous culture.” It relies on the essentializing assumption that the native population or properties of a place have some inherently authentic, superior qualities. As such, nativism is often criticized in political and postcolonial discourse. 51 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7. 52 Ibid., 114 & 163.
a powerful vehicle for the creation of shared cultural identity and collectivity.53 However,
according to food historian Fabio Parasecoli, it can also very easily be an “expression of political tensions, an arena for ideological negotiations, a propaganda device, or a tool that governments can deploy to measure, control, support, or punish whole populations.”54 The
cultural baggage of culinary traditions can therefore easily be repurposed and curated to support not only collective positions, but also fundamentally exclusionary ones. In Italy this is compounded by the fact that cooking and eating are activities universally held in high regard: to quote Leone Contini himself, “Food is one of the pillars of the Italian national identity.”55 This culinary culture, even before the existence of the country as a political unity
in 1861, has helped Italian people craft a definition and identity for themselves with immense certainty.56 This tradition can be traced back in history for centuries and is
therefore incredibly rooted in the national identity.
Terms proposed by theorists for this phenomenon include “gastro-essentialism,” which according to Michael Herzfeld means “to claim an eternal authenticity for what, historically speaking, is but a single rendition of a variable set of practices.”57 This version
highlights the ultimate relativity and variance of all cultural practices as well as strengthening the idea that cultural authenticity is a fallacy. Similarly, Ilaria Porciani coins the term “gastropopulism” to highlight the far-right co-option of food in order to advance their political agenda and to defend the cultural identity they perceive to be under threat. Examples of this attitude have been touched upon previously in the media examples displaying fear of foreign cabbages or in the annoyance that the Chinese immigrants have their own restaurants. This gastronationalism is not only the remit of the far right, as its discourse is also heavily internalized on a governmental level as well. Authorities have been putting an increasing focus, according to Parasecoli, on “the economic potential of culinary traditions and local products” by promoting labels such as Protected Designation of Origin 53 Benasso and Stagi, “The Carbonara-Gate: Food Porn and Gastro-Nationalism,” 246. 54 Parasecoli, “Gastropopulism: Food and Identity Politics,” 11 November 2019, Accessed 9 December 2019, https://fabioparasecoli.com/gastropopulism-food-and-identity-politics/ 55 Guida, “An interview with Leone Contini curated by Cecilia Guida.” 56 Montanari, Italian Identity in the Kitchen, 15-16. 57 Herzfeld, “The Gustatory Politics of Gastro-Essentialism,” 31.
(PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) (Fig. 8).58 This sense of exceptionalism
of Italian comestible products feeds into a vision of cultural superiority. The narrative about Italian national dishes relies on a claim to authenticity and heritage as well as on the glorification of ‘native’ dishes made with native species. Through this it automatically creates suspicion towards any external influences and the foreign actors that might carry them. Fig.8. European Union schemes of geographical indications and traditional specialties: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).
This gastro-essentialism completely closes off the nature of culinary traditions themselves. According to Herzfield, “food practices do change precisely because they are practices, not sets of rules written in stone.”59 Attempting to glorify a native species as
authentic denies not only the labor of immigrants in creating and growing such native staples, but also the fact that the widely identified “Italianness” of the cuisine is substantially and ceaselessly infused by local and global impacts.60 For instance, by offering a historical review,
the food studies scholar Massimo Montanari shows how the emblematic food of the nation, pasta, only became a staple food for the masses from the seventeenth century onwards.61
Originating in Naples, it was a solution to the problem of resource decline because its
58 Parasecoli “The Invention of Authentic Italian Food," 33. 59 Herzfeld, “The Gustatory Politics of Gastro-Essentialism,” 39. 60 Parasecoli “The Invention of Authentic Italian Food," 34. 61 Montanari, Italian Identity in the Kitchen, 41-43.
carbohydrate load could provide enough calories and a feeling of satiation. Consequently, after the country’s unification, eating pasta became a sharing of culture; from a symbol of Naples it successfully transformed into a national symbol thus revolutionizing the whole gastronomic image of the peninsula.62 This process shows the deceptive nature of culinary traditions based in shifting geographical and historical influences, proving how misleading claims to gastro-essentialism are. 1.3 Formulation of the Invasive No investigation of the native would not be complete without an inquiry into its antithesis: the invasive. According to Claire Jean Kim, the problematic belief in “invasive species” has been institutionalized on an international, national, and state level over the past three decades.63 The alien intruders are defined as “non-native species that become established in a new environment then proliferate and spread in ways that damage human interests.”64 According to Kim, this view relies on a double mistake: on the one hand that the “intruders” are anomalous and pernicious; and one the other hand, that the ecosystem of the natives will and should remain closed, invariable and balanced, therefore distorting the ecological and biological processes of change.65 In her eyes, the overall problem with the invasive/native
species trope is that it is “historically arbitrary, geographically ambiguous, ecologically unsound, culturally insensitive, socio-politically dubious and economically futile.”66 Kim’s
claims are backed up by scientists such as Alan Burdick. He insists that even if it is compelling to engage with the disease metaphor of invasion, “most invasions do no harm” and “have surprisingly little impact on their new environments.”67 In fact, many newcomers can
transform ecosystems with different organisms in positive ways instead of undermining them. 62 Montanari, Italian Identity in the Kitchen, 41-43. 63 Kim, “The Optic of Ecological Harm,” 151-152. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 158. 66 Ibid., 157. 67 Alain Burdick, "The Truth About Invasive Species," Discover Magazine, 20 January 2005, Accessed 19 June 2020, https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-truth-about-invasive-species
Even if the history of humanity was always defined by exchanges of genetic material, and even if all known ecosystems go through long processes of change and evolution, it is indisputable that this heightened anxiety around invasive species is expedited by globalization. The mixing and intermingling caused by the large population movements in contemporary times can be directly connected to the attempt to fight against aliens, be they non-human or human.68 The unease and fundamental uncertainty around large-scale social
and political shifts is regularly misplaced onto foreign elements. Historian Giacomo Todeschini argues against understanding the concept of exclusion today as merely a summation of exclusionary forms from the past but rather as practices which are highly connected to an unequal economic globalization. The modernization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made globalized market and global financial powers emerge and thus prompt certain standards of exclusion to be conceptually and actually reorganized and reshaped. 69 As suggested by Todeschini, across different cultural worlds, exclusion
commonly bears the same two indurated features: ignorance and the mythical representation of strangers.70 The image of strangers is consistently produced through
linguistic representations: the phantasmal ‘others’ are unknown inhuman monsters. In other words, the thinking of racial hierarchy among humans is not applicable to explain the roots of pre-modern perceptions of strangers. Exclusionary practices are the outcome of ancient fantasies between human and uncivilized animals living on remote lands.71
In her work, Kim already shows that the prevalence of the anti-invasive species discourse cloaks and advocates particular class and racial interests. The invasive/native discourse is a place for the fear of white society of being displaced by immigrants of color, for example.72 In Kim’s terms, the fabrication of invaders as inattentive, detrimental and
hyper-fertile lays its foundation on how non-white immigrants are imagined. Invasive species are fantasized to straightaway pose a threat to the autochthonous environment, race and local economics. Above all, the more a species is regarded as economically menacing, the deeper it is racialized and nearly every horror story of invasive species is in substance about 68 Subramaniam, “Reflections on The Rhetoric of Biological Invasions.” 69 Todeschini, “Exclusions: A Concept in Global History,” 138 & 149. 70 Ibid., 141. 71 Ibid., 144-146. 72 Kim, “The Optic of Ecological Harm,” 151-152.
economic damage. Environmental studies professor William O’Brien continues this thread
and makes it absolutely clear that the anti-exotic plant rhetoric is fundamentally connected to an anti-immigration one and he notes that the rhetoric used in conservation and ecological restoration can often reinforce discrimination and xenophobia in society as well.73 The
terminology chosen for these plants already offers a glimpse into potential issues: O’Brien highlights how, for example, discussing biological processes in military terms like ‘invasion’ has an instant association with “a national or even global security threat.”74 Framing the
presence of non-native plants as an invasion means elevating the situation to one of perceived danger, such as that of foreign armies threatening national integrity. This metaphor is no accident as indeed the discourse around invasive species is based on a local versus foreign, inside versus outside dynamic that heavily draws on nation-building models.75 There are specific examples from Italy that reproduce this exact atmosphere of
militarization, nationalism and threat. As it has been already mentioned at length in the first part of this chapter, there is a serious issue with a violent discourse in response to specifically Chinese vegetation in Italy. For instance, a 2018 article titled ‘Oriental seeds landed in Livorno and cultivated in the South’ (Fig. 9) patently claims that:
Whether they are genetically modified or hybridized products, we are faced with violations of the law on the health of citizens and, moreover, under obvious unfair competition - underlines Donzelli (FDI) - the government has replied to the Chamber in our commission on our question on illegal agriculture, we ask that it be struck down as soon as possible.76
This approach to foreign matters, demanding violent action like striking down or suppression is not uncommon. Donzelli is here referring to vegetables, but this style of righteous anger can easily be re-directed towards the immigrants themselves. 73 O’Brien, “Exotic Invasions, Nativism, and Ecological Restoration,” 65. 74 Ibid., 69. 75 Muller, “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism.” 76 “Semi orientali sbarcati a Livorno e coltivati al Sud,” 14 December 2018, Accessed 11 November 2020, http://www.livorno24.com/semi-orientali-sbarcati-a-livorno-e-coltivati-al-sud/
Fig.9. “Oriental seeds landed in Livorno and cultivated in the South,” 2018.
The normalization of right-wing populist discourse in Italy has already been alluded to, as part of what Luca Fazzi calls “a climate of widespread hostility in public opinion against immigration.”77 Even a short linguistic comparison between the invasive
plant and immigration discourse there is highly revealing. Contini shows that adjectives and nouns most often used in relation to Chinese farms in Italy include: invasion, irregular, danger, criminal, clandestine, unfair, inhuman, contaminated, toxic, unauthorized.78
Anti-immigration discourse, summarized by Monica Colombo, relies on concepts such as invasion, plague, threat, besieging army, clandestine, irregular, illegal, undocumented.79
The rhetoric has actual overlap in some terms like invasion, irregular or illegal. But there is also a clear overlap in meaning as well, as all of the terms are negative and are associated with fear, criminality, infestation and threat. It is crucial to remember that these terms are collected from a variety of different contexts and uses and show some general trends in use of language beyond individual intent or specific events. O’Brien reminds that racist or xenophobic intent is actually irrelevant, instead, the constant use 77 Fazzi, "Social Work, Exclusionary Populism and Xenophobia in Italy," 597. 78 Leone Contini, “Our Gourds First,” 20 March 2018, Accessed 8 December 2019, https://schloss-post.com/our-gourds-first/ 79 Colombo, “Discourse and politics of migration in Italy,” 164-165.
of these concepts and words encourages the “perpetuation of a discourse with a troubling genealogy that continues to guide the way we represent the immigrant Other.”80 All the damaging baggage behind invasive species is, then, completely applicable to the plight of immigrants and I have shown that the rhetoric parallel between the two is also highly relevant in Italy. All in all, this chapter has introduced the historic context of the Chinese migration to Tuscany, their labor activities and the deeply hostile mediatic response to their presence. These facts were supplemented by theoretical approaches showing the interrelated working of various discourses: the protection of native species, anti-exotic plant fear, nationalism, gastro-essentialism and anti-immigrant sentiment. It has shown how anxieties about nativism; loss of cultural authenticity and globalization are deeply interrelated with the realm of plants and food. This chapter therefore sets some initial guidelines about the invasive/native trope that will allow the case study analysis to unfold. The next chapter will build on the current one by showing how Contini draws on anthropology to create a type of nuanced, culturally sensitive practice that can craft alternative discourses to the ones presented so far. 80 O’Brien, “Exotic Invasions, Nativism, and Ecological Restoration,” 75.
CHAPTER 2
Anthropological Fieldwork as Art Production
In order to prove how Leone Contini reconfigures preconceived notions of the invasive and the native, this chapter will investigate what approaches, conditions and specific ways of working allow him to reconstruct that antithesis. One way Contini performs this is by achieving a fruitful mix between the discipline of anthropology and the discipline of art. First, the chapter will provide a brief overview of this disciplinary relationship in order to focus on how Contini approaches it. Having established the context, the concept of fieldwork will be used as the crux in order to conclude that this anthropological methodology allows for participation and research in art in a more complex way than artistic methods alone can. The three aspects covered will have to do with multi-sitedness, a long temporal process and a nuanced mutual relationship with the Other. In order to investigate how these plays out, the case study will be the long-term artwork TuscanChinese (2011-2014) and some smaller event artworks that are also part of it: The Diaspora Courgettes (2013) and the lecture-performance Km0 (2012).
2.1 Analogy Between Two Disciplines: Anthropology and Art
Anthropological research shares significant similarities with art creation that have not gone unnoticed. Aflred Gell, in the 1999 volume of collected essays Art of Anthropology makes a claim about the usefulness of imagery as a tool to conceptualize social relations, for example.81 In a similar vein, in the 1995 Art of Fieldwork, Harry F. Wolcott places
anthropology between a soft science and a rigorous art, encouraging the researcher to draw on artistic imagination in interpreting findings in order to allow for a human touch and a preservation of complexity when dealing with data.82 In more recent years, Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright have co-edited and published several books such as Between Art and Anthropology (2010) or Anthropology and Art Practice (2013) which examine the expanding of this disciplinary intersection in recent decades. By highlighting practitioners in this hybrid 81 Gell and Hirsch, The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. 82 Wolcott, The Art of Fieldwork, 4-11
field, their research focuses on the shared ways of thinking and making between anthropologists and artists. The common ground, or what Pamela G. Smart calls the “reciprocal productivity” of these two fields is not clearly outlined in their work.83 Instead,
the two books outline tentative encounters between the fields, without making any decisive claims about their relations or its implications.84
A more conclusive comparison of what anthropology and art can absorb from each other is performed by George E. Marcus in his 2010 article ‘Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention.’ In this piece he lays down the correlation between anthropology, that in the 1980s and 90s underwent a re-thinking of its methods, and the participatory art of the same period, with its interest in research and social engagement. However, despite this parallel development, in this article Marcus notes the specific ways in which art can influence and enrich anthropological inquiries. For him, art opens up an abstract, reflexive terrain that allows fieldwork to become multi-sited.85 There is also a mediation and relationality that the artistic
process provides in contrast with the closed, data-driven text production of ethnography.86
Marcus, however, like most other anthropologists and ethnographers quoted so far, is still primarily interested in thinking through how his native discipline might learn from art. In contrast, I focus more on the mutually-beneficial relation between the two, and am interested in questioning how artistic practices might, in turn, be enriched by the fieldwork approaches of critical anthropology. The critical anthropology setting is crucial here. Since the 1980s, anthropology has seen a complete overhaul of its working and goals. Before this time ethnocentrism was a bigger problem as it was more common for (often) Western researchers to be deployed to faraway lands to study the Other on the academic’s own terms and produce an account of the life of the natives that was arrogantly thought to be comprehensive.87 The roots of the 83 Smart, “Book Review: Anthropology and Art Practice,” 50. 84 Schneider and Wright, Anthropology and Art Practice, 4. 85 Marcus, “Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics,” 273. 86 Ibid., 274. 87 "Certainly the European, Western 'here' assumes its full meaning in relation to the distant elsewhere - formerly 'colonial,' now 'underdeveloped' - favored in the past by British and French anthropology." -Marc Augé, Non-places, 8.
discipline are to be found in the Enlightenment mentality and in European colonization.88
Moving away from this stereotypical depiction of the field, anthropology has undergone much reflexive self-questioning. Recognizing the traps of representation, it no longer aims to represent Others, but relate to them and provide a more embedded view. Marcus claims that it aims to speak truth to power, a truth that notably takes into consideration the position of misrepresented subjects or power relations as well as critiquing the hegemony of Western thought.89 The current analysis of fieldwork is necessarily embedded in this particular strain of self-reflexive anthropological inquiry. Moreover, Tim Ingold provides a solid contribution to this debate. He separates the complementary but ultimately different fields of ethnography and anthropology. He claims that the former has a more specific scope, to describe a situation as lived by people in a specific location, more interested in gathering data. The latter conversely, deals with the conditions and potentialities of life in the world more generally.90 The key difference is that
anthropology allows for a more speculative, political, philosophical approach as opposed to the higher commitment to fidelity in ethnography. Therefore, despite fieldwork often being viewed as primarily an ethnographic method, here it will be embedded into a critical anthropology that, like Ingold says, “is experimental and interrogative [and] can combine with art practice in highly productive ways.”91 Fieldwork, in this case, is not dry data
gathering and mere observation, but a critical, explorative relation with the locals.
2.2 Fieldwork and Multi-Sitedness
The work of Contini is a perfect case study for surveying the disciplinary blend of art and anthropology. He is not only a graduate of Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Siena, but equally has built an artistic practice in its own right, collaborating with the Fine Arts Academy in Florence and the Delfina Foundation in London, among many other institutions. According to Contini himself, "it no longer makes much sense to distinguish between the two spheres, to establish whether a project concerns anthropology 88 Wolff and Cipolloni, The Anthropology of the Enlightenment. 89 Marcus, “Affinities: Fieldwork in Anthropology Today,” 90. 90 Ingold, “Anthropology contra Ethnography,” 21. 91 Ibid., 24.
or art."92 Having established his familiarity with anthropology and his seamless blending of
traditions, it is time to explore how he employs the anthropological concept of fieldwork inside of his artistic projects. First of all, when discussing the site of artworks, the physical location comes up. TuscanChinese (2011-2014) is a series of interventions performed by Contini in his local community together with Chinese immigrant farmers living in the Prato region like his neighbors, Mr. Hu or Yu Fen, who Contini regards as friends. Contini detects that these individuals, previously labor work migrants who are now settled, have started ploughing and sowing on the abandoned farms in the countryside. Using their agricultural know-how, they are growing a wide range of plants not native to Italy: bok choy, pomelo, elongated eggplant, ginger, etc. Contini sets up his research by closely observing their practices and aims at drawing conclusions about identity formation, migration and culinary traditions. His output is multi-faceted, consisting of lecture performances, culinary events, walks, videos, publications, etc. At this point it is crucial to accentuate that he creates these artwork-events in his “own heimat;” turning the researcher’s analytical eye on his backyard in a way that includes a deep personal involvement.93 Contini himself claims that this choice to work in his own environment instead of dipping in and out of different residencies abroad has a bearing on this work method: he cannot “escape the responsibility of representation, (...) run away with the stories of the people.”94 Instead, the stories from TuscanChinese are based in the site
around his house and he must show responsibility towards his neighbors when conveying their stories. This is not the ethnographer landing in an unknown exotic land to study the natives, what Marcus calls “crossing a marked boundary of cultural difference.”95 It is a more humble, small-scale localized approach; he works with the Chinese farmers so the mark of 92 Flavia Matitti, “Leone Contini's sense for seeds (Il senso di Leone Contini per i semi),” 22 August 2019, Accessed 9 July 2020, https://www.exibart.com/senza-categoria/il-senso-di-leone-contini-per-i-semi/ 93 Leone Contini, “Our Gourds First,” 20 March 2018, Accessed 8 December 2019, https://schloss-post.com/our-gourds-first/ 94 Régine Debatty, “How migrants can help Italian cuisine adjust to climate disruptions.” June 15, 2020, Accessed 5 July 2020, https://we-make-money-not-art.com/future-farming-how-migrants-can-help-italian-cuisine- adjust-to-climate-disruptions/ 95 Marcus, “Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics,” 264.
cultural difference is certainly there but it is approached differently.96 Due to the location of
the site in the neighborhood, the researcher and the subject are more on par with each other. This conception comes up in Marc Augé’s work, who claims that anthropology has moved in the direction of always having a bearing on the here and now.97 Practices are
situated in realms closer to the researchers themselves, resulting in them directly witnessing a present actuality. Augé goes on to address how European ethnologists are turning back to their own continent instead of favoring the distant elsewhere like in the colonial past. This commitment to the anthropology of the here and now can easily be identified in the fieldwork of TuscanChinese. Being embedded in his own life context, Contini’s fieldwork involves the necessary participant observation of the farmers and their practices but correlates it with his own presence in the area. This is in line with Ingold’s assessment that “Fieldwork is life and life is fieldwork.”98 Critics have noticed this dynamic at work in
Contini’s art, for instance in a discussion with him, Cecilia Guida brings up ”the strong ties that connect you and your neighborhood, which in many occasions you defined as a sort of permanent fieldwork.”99 The connection between the researcher and farmers is obvious in his fieldwork notes: two pictures from the ‘Our Gourds First’ story are simply titled Neighbor, Carmignano, 2014. The first shows a smiling farmer dressed in khaki, resting on a long cane or hoe in the middle of the field (Fig. 10). The second, in contrast, merely shows rows of plants, raised structures completely covered by what look like the stalks of climbing courgettes (Fig. 11). The neighbor can therefore be the person but also the site, the plot of land. This title - ‘neighbor’ - includes Contini as a point of reference but does not only center him, instead it makes the work seem familiar. Always implicated, the artist might never abandon his research, as he is caught in a permanent fieldwork because any simple interaction with neighboring land or farmers will contribute to his work. 96 This will be explored more in-depth in subchapter 2.4 Fieldwork and the Other. 97 Augé, Non-places, 8. 98 Ferrández, “Ways of living: Culture, biology and anthropological work according to Tim Ingold,” 289. 99 Guida, “A Conversation about the ‘Bank of the Migrating Germplasm’,” 213.
Fig.10. “Neighbor, Carmignano,” ©Vittorio Contini Bonacossi, 2014.
Fig.11. “Neighbor, Carmignano,” ©Vittorio Contini Bonacossi, 2014.
