Benetton Foundation Research Centre continues, with a cycle of extra meetings, the reflection on the theme Bodies, landscapes, started with the seventeenth edition of the International Days of
Landscape Studies (February 18-19-25-26, 2021, video recordings available on the Foundation’s Facebook page).
In the first event, Notes on Neo-Ecology. The Body of the Anthropocene, scheduled for Wednesday, March 3 at 6:00 pm on the Zoom platform, Maurizio Corrado, architect,
essayist and writer, will propose a reflection around the question “How has the Anthropocene changed our bodies?” starting from the theses published in the volumes The Body of the
Anthropocene (Codice Edizioni, 2020) by VybarrCregan-Reid and The History of the Human Body (Codice edizioni, 2014) by Daniel Lieberman.
That our actions have altered the environment is clear to all, but does the shape we have given it affect us and our bodies? It seems so and not only that, it also determines behaviors –
writes Corrado in the magazine “doppiozero.com” […] – Our body evolved in the Pleistocene, between two and three million years ago, and has gone through several phases to become what
it is today. The body of Anthropocene man has changed not as a result of evolution, but in response to the environment we ourselves created. For most of our history we have been
hunter-gatherers. […] To a body, ours, evolved and adapted to meet those needs in that environment, modern living is about as suitable as jumping into a hole in the ice. The urban
environment, which seems normal to us on a conscious level, is read by our body as a desert without resources, it does not recognize it and continues to desire to stay outdoors and move as it has
always done. […] By now it is clear that when we were hunter-gatherers we were much more robust and fit than the vast majority of anthropocene humans. We are in full evolutionary
mismatch, over time natural selection adapts the body to the conditions of the environment (matching), when the environment changes, the body has to adapt or it will have problems, but it does it
very very slowly. We have a Paleolithic body in an anthropocene world.
Luigi Latini, President of the Scientific Committee of Benetton Foundation Research Centre, introduces the event.
Maurizio Corrado, architect, essayist and writer. He has been working on project ecology since the mid-nineties. He has worked for newspapers and televisions, organized exhibitions and
cultural events, directed series, magazines and training facilities, and has published over twenty non-fiction books on design and ecological architecture. He writes literature and theater. He
has taught at the University of Camerino, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and Verona, at Naba in Milan.
Zoom platform. Registration through the appropriate link published on the Foundation’s social channels and website, www.fbsr.it
