Towards an aesthetic anthropology of the ecological crisis: theatre, visual arts and the "crisis of presence" in the city of Taranto

Abstract

Stemming from a dialogue between a performance artist and an anthropologist, this article explores the ways in which artists have related to environmental crises in southern Italy, and investigates how their practices and aesthetic insights might inform the work of ethnographers in heavily contaminated areas such as the city of Taranto. Of particular interest is the approach with which Taranto-based artist Isabella Mongelli has entered into dialogue with the ecological crisis in the Apulian city through a particular mobilization of the senses that underline the psychophysical experience of industrial poison and toxicity in its continuous oscillation between visibility and invisibility. By paying attention to artistic practices that detach themselves from an aestheticization of catastrophe, the article aims to trace and reconfigure the relationship between art (as an autonomous sphere) and politics (as direct action), highlighting the political relevance of sensory experience and emotional states in the anthropological study of the environmental crisis.