Humus starts its journey by looking at the ground, on which not only our feet but also our homes, cities, factories and roads stand; and where orchards, wheat fields and woods spread their roots. Our whole existence is based on that which may seem just a surface, but which in fact is much more. Because it has a thickness, a depth, a history and a very intense life.
Paolo Pileri, Urban Planning and Design professor at Milan Polytechnic, interviewed in this issue, wrote in his book L’intelligenza del suolo (ed. Altraeconomia, 2022): “The ground is a porous skin, but is also selective and generative. It protects the intimacy of our planet, selecting what can be introduced and what not. It expels all that is in excess and withholds all that is needed to feed it. It combines substances, generating new ones. It is a great stabiliser, but also a transformer. It protects from changes in the weather, changes in temperature and safeguards the planet’s most creative and untiring laboratory of energy and raw materials, as it gives life to everything that lies above.”
We decided to start from the earth, written in with a lower case ‘e’, because this is our matrix and we want to pay it all the attention we can. Even though today the earth – understood as the soil – is no longer a “hot topic”. And yet we think differently. In this issue we aim to rediscover and tell of the ancestral relationship that binds us to it.
We believe that the time has come to listen to and observe it, take it in our hands, break it up and mix it together. Like artists do when, in an increasingly dense crowd, they choose ceramics as a means of expression. We met them, seeking to understand their preference. But not only: rare earths have also come onto their radar, and here we offer the insights of the geologist Mario Tozzi; once recycled, they were used as pigments to paint works that light up in the dark. In this issue, we also tell of the experience of a young designer with freshly extracted clay, and the “liberation” of the ground from concrete as a virtuous urban landscaping practice.
The more we explore this topic the more ideas, research, investigations come to the fore, including the impressive photographic works of Edward Burtynsky, who looks into the current state of our ‘mater’.
And thus, we discover that artists, creative people and researchers listen closely to the earth, for more than one reason. Certainly what drives them is what Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) wrote: “The earth is not a simple fragment of still life, layer on layer, like the leaves of a book designed especially by geologists and antique dealers, but rather living poetry, like the leaves of a tree that come before flowers and fruits…”
