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Reviewed by:
  • Sul Ritorno Del Bosco/Return of the Woods
  • Thaisa Way (bio)
SUL RITORNO DEL BOSCO/RETURN OF THE WOODS Giornate internazionali di studio sul paesaggio, dodicesima edizioneFondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche Treviso, 02 18–19, 2016

Hosted by the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, “Return of the Woods” or “Sul ritorno del bosco” brought together researchers and practitioners from Europe and the United States to explore the significance and functions of trees and woods in historical, contemporary and future contexts. The two-day symposium, coordinated by Luigi Latini and Simonetta Zanon, was inspired by the current resurgence of “woods” in design and restoration projects, as well as the call for expanding urban forests.

The Fondazione, based in Treviso, Italy, with the leadership of an interdisciplinary Scientific Committee, has facilitated discussions on the field of landscape with an international perspective amongst practitioners and scholars in the arts, history, geography, philosophy and the natural sciences. The topics have ranged broadly while being grounded in the notion of rethinking the idea of landscape and the garden as a means to generate alternative practices and knowledge. This symposium was the twelfth of the International Landscape Study Days, each addressing a topic of interest in the design and scientific communities, and building on previous symposia that addressed “ Caring for the Land” (2014) and “ Landscape and Conflict” (2015).

Humans have carved spaces for inhabitation out of large expanses of trees since time immemorial. We have come to have multiple words for these tree-filled landscapes. The expansive spaces are forests, a term that comes from the Latin forestem silvam“the outside woods,” as well as perhaps from the royal hunting grounds in France, “le forêt.” The forest was grand as well as mysterious, and often dangerous. Woods on the other hand likely comes from Old English “wudu” and has been historically associated with production. Such discussions recall the writings of Simon Schama on landscape, memory, and imagination, and especially the relationship of German history, the Nazis, and the forest primeval. Today the terms and ideas are often conflated as in urban forests (one can just imagine [End Page 313]suggesting that the city is a hunting ground); however, the difference suggests the breadth of cultural associations tied to these words and places.

The perspectives were intentionally varied, including those of speakers in landscape architecture, economics, and history as well as those of restoration ecologists and forest managers and a documentary film-maker, Michelangelo Frammartino, who premiered the film “Alberi” (Trees). The woods were offered as a dynamic and powerful link between nature and culture, between the natural and the cultivated. As Kamni Gill (University of Sheffield) noted, the woods could be as simple as a grove of trees on abandoned land or it could be, as Giuseppe Barbera (University of Palermo) described, the mystical place of magic and madness. In “Alberi,” the ritual of the Romito, a tree-like man who is covered in ivy as he wanders through villages asking for charity, was beautifully if hauntingly portrayed, emphasizing the complicated ways in which we have come to think of nature and culture.

Perhaps in reference to the deep history of forests as places of ritual and mythology, the symposium began with descriptions of cultural narratives of woods. The historical significance, according to Frederico Lopez Silvestre (Aesthetics and Art History, University of Santiago de Compostela) had once engaged a far more contested space of awe and fear that had been lost in popular culture, resulting in a far more benign view of both woods and forests. Later we returned to this topic as Giuseppe Barbera (University of Palermo) suggested that the contemporary disregard for forest ecological health may well stem from conflicting perceptions of trees, woods, and forests that stem from medieval associations, thus deeply embedded in western culture. From the mythological, the discussion turned to aesthetic readings of woods as Tessa Matteini (Landscape Architecture, University of Venice) described them as portions of gardens as evident in Cicero’s writings and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii. She concluded with Thomas Whately’s prose of the 1770s and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s 20th century landscapes, thus bringing us to a more contemporary moment.

With that, the discussion...

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