ORTO

ISBN: 9788880561040
òrto – noun [lat. hŏrtus]  The Italian word for a small or medium
plot of land, often next to or around a
house, enclosed by wall or hedge, in which
vegetables, fruit and flowers are grown.
In certain literary uses and some specific
cases, it is equivalent, as already in Latin,
to “garden” (lat. hortus).

ORTO ORTO
ORTO
ORTO
Joëlle Comé, Gioia Dal Molin, Adrian Brändli
Preface p.5

Dominique Laleg
Algeria: Flowering of the Uprooted p.6

Armando Bramanti
Barley, They Wrote.
Passions and Misdemeanors
in Ancient Mesopotamia p.16

Anaïs Wenger
Studio Visit p.26

Charlotte Matter
Laziness in Lotus Land:
Hélio Oiticica and the Notion of Crelazer p.40

Pauline Julier
Elon and the stars p.54
Quinn Latimer
Dear Drone p.61

Real Madrid
Chacun pour sa Gueule p.64

Nastasia Meyrat
May it be p.68
Attilia Fattori Franchini
A Divinatory Conversation
Through the Tarot p.77

Urs August Steiner

S01E06 Fornever Forget p.80

Francesco Dendena, Kiri Santer

A Garden to be Reinvented /
Against the Aesthetics of the Garden p.86

Johanna Bruckner
Celestial Gardens:
Embodied Atmospheres
and Xeno Temporalities p.108

Romeo Dell’Era
Before the Villa Maraini, a History of Horti.
Travelling Back Through the Centuries
While Staying at Home p.124

Saul Marcadent
Afterword p.139
Villa Maraini, the Roman seat of the Istituto Svizzero, is sur-
rounded by a lush, almost paradisiac garden whose shimmer-
ing green is visible from afar. Palm and pine trees rise part-
ly crooked into the sky and rosemary grows in large bushes.
Artificially constructed rock formations, originally from the
Tivoli thermal baths, form small grottos. The loud screeching
of seagulls mixes with other bird voices, some of them taped.
In this way, the hawk’s cries spread by loudspeakers are sup-
posed to keep the starlings away from the garden. It is not
unusual for the lawnmower to roar early in the morning, and
on the narrow footpaths, cut palm leaves pile up.
Yet the arrival of a novel virus turned life at Villa Maraini
upside down. The garden became more than ever a refuge for
those who remained; digital means served as a lifeline to keep
in touch with those who were stuck outside. Every year, the
Istituto Svizzero invites six artists and six scientists to Roma
Calling, a unique residency experience. Over the course of ten
months, a multidisciplinary community forms, looking be-
yond each resident’s own field of expertise. The year is packed
with cultural activities, events, journeys, workshops, and in-
dividual research. In March 2020, this all came to a sudden
halt due to the coronavirus.
The final event that usually marked the end of the residen-
cy was transformed into this publication, which proposes an
imaginative journey through the gardens of our residents.
Page after page, the contributions show their dedication to a
collaborative project that was shaped in spite of the pandem-
ic. Taking inspiration from the enclosed and protected space
that provided shelter, leisure, and interaction, the book
stands for a collaborative project that unites artistic and sci-
entific strategies of research and knowledge production. It
therefore underlines the desire to come together and achieve
a common goal–to bridge boundaries, and quite literally, to
overcome spatial distance. This sentiment should eventually
remain with each and every one going through these pages.

Joëlle Comé, Gioia Dal Molin, Adrian Brändli

Directorate, Istituto Svizzero

ORTO 5
Barley, They Wrote:
Passions and Misdemeanors
in Ancient Mesopotamia

Armando Bramanti

A short story set in third millennium BCE Mesopotamia.

The characters and the events of the story are fictional
but historically accurate, and are inspired by the
information contained in hundreds of thousands of
ancient cuneiform documents.
The events might be more than four-thousand-years-old,
but the passions and the struggles of the characters are
still relatable.

16
It had been a long night for Ur-Enki. His legs and feet were Editor’s note: words and
aching, and it was almost a day since the last time he ate expressions in bold are discussed
in the second part of the chapter,
some bread. It was certainly not the first time that he walked
where the reader will find more
that distance and he knew that route by heart, but this time information about the historical,
he was trying to cover his tracks and took the long loop. Boy, geographical, and cultural context
he was tired! And a new day was just about to start. of the story.
He couldn’t have been happier to feel the grass below his
feet. As he advanced through the lush vegetation the morn-
ing dew washed away the sand of the desert from the leather
of his sandals. A gentle breeze swayed the trees around him:
he could have sworn he smelled fresh cumin and acrid flow-
ers. The sun was still low on the horizon but its rays, filtered
through the high and gnarled logs of a nearby palm grove,
were warm enough to bring an old proverb about palm trees
to Ur-Enki’s mind—head in fire, feet in water. His head had
been on fire for too long a time since the moment in which he
had run away from his problems, and he was now starting to
realize that he needed to drink some water.
The proverb didn’t fail him. The waters of a shallow canal
were placidly flowing just a few steps away from that palm
grove. He leaned over the bank and drank from his hands.
Then he washed his face and arms and collapsed onto the
ground in exhaustion. A bunch of dates hanging from the
treetop above his head was the last thing he saw before clos-
ing his eyes and falling asleep.

“O date palm, who takes whatever the wind bears,

Take misdeed, offense, crime, and sin away from me.
May I not die from misery, sleeplessness, disease, anxiety…”

The day before, he was in the city. The celebrations of the New
Year’s festival were still a fresh memory and life was slowly go-
ing back to normal after almost two weeks of craziness. The
precincts of the city temples were teeming with all sorts of
people, the gods being offered beer and wine in abundance,
besides every kind of agricultural product and the firstlings
of every flock of the region. The havoc caused by the crowds
hoarding the sanctuaries gave Ur-Enki the perfect opportu-
nity to take care of some personal business at the main gra-
nary of the palace where he worked as a guardian.
The last years had been tough on a lot of people. The famine
was still hitting the the land, and many farmers would soon
have trouble paying their dues for the fields they were rent-
ing from the temple. Ur-Enki’s office gave him almost free
access to the storehouse of the granary, and he had been us-
ing this opportunity to ease the social pressure on those poor
farmers by providing them with a few extra sacks of barley.

ORTO 17
After all, shortfalls at the granary were quite common after the
harvest season, and it had always been way too easy to blame
it on the elderly scribe. Somebody would have called Ur-Enki a
seasoned thief and a ruthless usurer. He’d rather think about
himself as a philanthropist.
It was a child’s play. Break the sealing of the gate, take the
barley, cover the mess on the gate with some fresh clay, and
roll again the seal over it —“borrowing” that precious little
cylinder from the scribe had been a matter of nothing. But
this time the “philanthropist” would forget the last passage
and thus give away the illegitimate intrusion. The day after,
the elderly yet zealous scribe would discover the broken seal-
ing and raise the alarm. In a couple of days the city guards
had solved what had seemed to be too easy a case and were
already after the thief. At this point Ur-Enki had no other
choice than to flee and leave the city under cover of darkness.

— Sir…Can you hear me, sir? Sir! — The deep voice of a young
man yelling at him interrupted Ur-Enki’s dreams. The light of
the sun, now high in the sky, permeated his eyelids and awak-
ened him completely. — Who is you, sir? Where you come? —
The accent and the broken Sumerian of the young man re-
vealed his foreign origins. He wasn’t wearing any shoes and
his hands were dirty and rough. His buff body was somehow
intimidating. He was almost certainly a servant.
— I’m Ur-Enki. And this is the garden of Ninheduanna, the
widow of Ilum-bani. You must be new here if you don’t know
me. Do something good and bring me to her! — His tone was
firm and slightly arrogant, but he couldn’t waste any time on
pleasantries with a slave.
Luckily enough, that tone seemed to be working well, since
he was being escorted through the garden without more ques-
tions. They left the waters of the canal and the palm grove
and crossed a large orchard full of blooming trees, laden with
ripe, juicy fruits. Two rows of pomegranate trees flanked one
of the main paths, offering shelter to diverse species of birds
and who knows how many other animals. The resolute steps
of the two men interrupted the banquet of a small group of
starlings, who flew away frantically flapping their wings: only
chunks of the hollow red husks of a couple of pomegranates
and few half-eaten seeds were left on the floor. In a moment
the scenery changed again. The sweet and pungent scent of
ripe figs filled the air as they passed through some trees with
greener and meaty leaves. Ur-Enki reached out for a low-
hanging fruit and picked it effortlessly without stopping to
walk. He opened it in half with two hands, brought it to his
mouth, and sucked its pulp with great satisfaction. It was

Armando Bramanti
Barley, They Wrote 18
the first thing he was getting into his system after escaping
from the city and it was surely not enough to calm down the
cramps in his stomach. By the time they reached the desti-
nation he had time to pick three or four more figs, which he
devoured with great appetite.
A small one-story structure was sitting in the middle of
a lawn. The yellow-green grass had grown taller and thicker
since the last time he had been there, some two months be-
fore. As he picked up the pace to get inside the building, a
strong hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and stopped
him to restrain his enthusiasm.
— You waits here. Ninheduanna comes… maybe.
The slave disappeared in the house and Ur-Enki was left to
his thoughts.
— Fair enough — he said aloud with a pinch of irony with-
out even realizing it. His future was now depending on the
choices of a servant. Life had apparently found a way to re-
mind him about manners.
He didn’t have to wait too long until Ninheduanna ap-
peared at the door.
— So now you’re here — she said while leaning sensually
against the door jamb. — To what do I owe this visit, my
sweet Ur-Enki? — Her voice was as mellow as honey, but one
could clearly tell that she was not expecting his visit nor was
she particularly pleased to see him there.
— My righteous lady, delightful object of my desire! How
sweet is your caress, how voluptuous are your charms…
— And how fast you always run away from me — she inter-
rupted him with a provoking smile. — Last time you didn’t
care much about me and my land. And you know what kind of
man is my brother-in-law — her smile changed quickly into
a scowl.
That garden was everything Ninheduanna possessed after
the passing of her husband. It was more than enough for a
smart, young widow like her to run a flourishing business. But
the brother of the late Ilum-bani had convinced the judges
to initiate a trial against her, and she was now risking it all.
— We’ll handle it together — Ur-Enki’s voice was starting
to crack — but now you have to help me. I had to run away
from the city and I can’t go back there, the guards are after
me. I did nothing but…
— You did nothing? — she spat those words out in disbe-
lief. — You might have killed a man as far as I know!
— Are you mental? I would never kill anybody!
Ur-Enki realized that he had to change his game if he didn’t
want to worsen his situation.
— Ninheduanna, listen, it’s nothing more than a couple of
sacks of barley that I took from the granary. This year the har-
vest is going to be bad again, I was also thinking about you.

ORTO 19
 — I have enough food for an entire village here! But I won’t
anymore if they take this land away from me!
— Please, my lady, please, — he dropped to his knees and
started begging — let me hide here for a few nights! We’ll
take care of your land as soon as this blows over. I’ll pull some
strings, it’s a promise!
Ninheduanna lightly grumbled at the view of that big bold
man imploring at her. She already had plenty of troubles, and
didn’t need yet another tough decision to make. However,
one more mouth to feed wouldn’t have been such big a prob-
lem. It might be in the future, but not thus far.
— Kiriri! — she yelled turning her head toward the inside
of the house. The foreign slave promptly appeared at the
door. — Go fetch some fish for my guest. And you, — point-
ing her face at Ur-Enki — go inside, before I change my mind.
He didn’t need to be told twice and entered the building
bowing and scraping. Ninheduanna followed him in a min-
ute, asking herself if she had made the right choice letting
him in once again.

Ninheduanna’s husband was still alive when she first met

Ur-Enki. It was during the festival of the goddess Bawu, with
people flooding into the city from every corner of the coun-
try. She was bringing some offerings to the royal family—fresh
dates and oil from her garden, as every year—and an unusu-
ally young and attractive official received her in the storeroom
of the palace. Her visits to the city became more and more
frequent, as the family business prospered thanks to the new
connection with the granary, and after the passing of her hus-
band, Ur-Enki became a regular guest at Ninheduanna’s gar-
den. Or at least he was until a couple of months before.
— You must be hungry, — she said, doing her best to hide
the nerves — eat some bread, drink some beer. — And she
showed the way to the dining room with an elegant move-
ment of her arm. A silver bracelet band adorned her right
wrist. Her skin was white as milk, but her long, curly hair, tied
above shoulder height, was black as ebony. The tight, light-
weight dress was knotted behind her neck and left her shoul-
ders and arms uncovered, and a waistband of red wool clung
to her body just below her generous breasts. She was unapolo-
getically sensual and she owned it—a woman who knows how
to stay afloat in a man’s world—she would say about herself
from time to time.
Ur-Enki ate his fill and quenched his thirst with a copious
amount of beer. A full belly and the alcohol helped him to clear
his mind and forget about all his problems. In that small mud-
brick house in the middle of the field, in that verdant garden

Armando Bramanti
Barley, They Wrote 20
so far away from the chaotic streets of the city, he was finally
feeling safe again. Nothing bad could have possibly happened
as long as he was staying there. And he felt grateful for that.
For the whole time of the meal Ninheduanna had been
standing a few steps away from the desk, looking at him in
silence. Her mind was impenetrable. After staring at her for
a few moments he left the table, wrapped his arm around her
waist, and drew her body close to his own. He could smell her
womanly scent from the base of her neck. His mouth reached
her lips and she didn’t resist. He kissed her with everything
he was. He was a man, a thief, a beast. He was no good, but
he was hers. He untied the knot of her dress and grabbed her
breast firmly. His breath started to get heavier. With a slow
movement she took his other hand and gently brought him
to the bed. The sun was about to set behind the palm grove,
and she was now ready to welcome her guest into her garden.

“Here are my charms, arouse yourself

Let us make love, you and I
Let me have what I want of your delights”

— Open the door! — Ur-Enki jolted awake. He was alone in

the bed. A few rays of sun were filtering through the straw of
the roof.
— He said open the door! — another voice shouted. This
time the shout was accompanied by the noise of an open
hand hitting the caned door. Somebody let them in.
He was still half-naked as two guards entered the bedroom
and grabbed him by his underarms. Ninheduanna stood be-
hind them, looking by no means worried.
— Wait…my lady… — said a completely clueless Ur-Enki —
What the hell is going on here?
— Your slave, — said one of the guards turning to Ninhed-
uanna — that Kiriri…he did a good job finding us. Give him
some reward!
— Will be done, sir. But what about my reward?
Ur-Enki couldn’t believe to his eyes. His lover, the same
woman who the night before had offered him shelter, was now
bargaining with the city guards. He had been sold to them,
but for what?
— You’re sitting on your reward, — said the guard — there
won’t be any trial for you. The garden is yours: the case is
closed!
While the guards dragged Ur-Enki away, Ninheduanna
stood once again at her door, looking at her estate.
— I’m just a woman, — she said to herself — a woman who
knows how to stay afloat in a man’s world.

ORTO 21

Historical and geographical setting
The tale is set in southern Mesopotamia—
grosso modo nowadays Iraq—during the
twenty-first century BCE. This is the best
documented century in all Mesopotamian
history and is also called the Neo-Sumeri-
an period or Third Dynasty of Ur, after the
Sumerian dynasty that ruled over a large
part of Mesopotamia and controlled the
Iranian peripheries. The garden of the tale
might have been in the vicinity of any major
southern Mesopotamian city. The mention
of the festival of Bawu suggests that the
scene revolves around the city of Lagash,
the main center of worship of this goddess.
Lagash was one of the most important cit-
ies throughout the entire third millennium,
together with cities like Ur, Umma, Nippur,
and Adab.
Gardens
Mesopotamia’s most famous gardens are
Armando Bramanti
Barley, They Wrote
Main cities in southern Mesopotamia
during the 21st century BCE. Graphic
elaboration by the author.
arguably the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
In the Greek tradition they are often listed
as one of the seven wonders of the ancient
world. Nevertheless, no Mesopotamian
source mentions them and we have reasons
to believe that this Greek romantic idea
rather originated in the gardens of the royal
palaces of the Assyrian capital cities in the
first half of the first millennium BCE.
The garden of the tale is ca. fifteen cen-
turies older, and has completely different
features. In fact, our concept of garden does
not necessarily coincide with the Sumerian
word that we usually translate as garden
(ĝiškiri6). This indicates mostly palm groves,
which were often geographically close to
other woods, orchards, and meadows out-
side of the city. The Mesopotamian gar-
den is a full-fledged production unit which
interacted with the economy of the city,
providing raw materials such as wood and
reed, but also oil, wine, onions, and fruits
22
like dates, figs, pomegranates and others.1
Gardens might also produce several variet-
ies of spices and aromatic plants (Sume-
rian mun-gazi) such as mustard, coriander,
and cumin.2 The latter might even be one of
the most ancient loanwords in our modern
languages, coming from the Sumerian term
gamun, first through Akkadian kamūnu
and then through Ancient Greek κύμινον.
Administration
Most of what we know about the Mesopota-
mian world comes from the thorough study
of hundreds of thousands of cuneiform
documents written on clay tablets between
the end of the fourth millennium BCE and
the first century CE.3 A huge percentage of
these documents is of administrative na-
ture and records the circulation of goods
and economic transactions.
Barley was not only the most cultivated
crop, but also the basic unit of the Meso-
potamian economy. Many payments, as in
the case of tax-collection, were made in
barley, and loans of grains were common
all throughout Mesopotamian history.4 Af-
ter the harvest, barley was stored in large
granaries, and the doors of the storerooms
were often closed with clumps of clay. These
were then sealed by the impression of small,
cylindrical seals which were rolled over the
fresh clay and ensured that nobody had
opened the door after its sealing.5
A solid bureaucracy held together the
society of twenty-first century BCE Meso-
potamia, where innumerable functionar-
ies and clerics were in charge of the most
diverse aspects of administration.6 Scribes
1 On gardens, palm groves, orchards and their
administration during the Neo-Sumerian period, see
Greco 2015.
2 On aromatic plants (mun-gazi), see Maekawa 1985,
especially 98–100.
3 For an introduction to cuneiform and its more
material aspects, see Bramanti 2018.
4 On management of resources and taxation in third
and second millennium Mesopotamia, see Alivernini
and Mynářová, forthcoming.
5 On doors and safety sealing systems, see Fiandra 1982.
6 For a recent overview of Neo-Sumerian
ORTO
were highly skilled clerks, who frequently
held offices of responsibility.7
The fictional sealing of the scribe of
the tale. The legend reads: “Ur-Ĝidru,
the scribe, son of Lugalkuzu” (ur-
d
ĝidru / dub-sar / dumu lugal-ku3-zu).
The iconography shows a common
presentation scene with a seated
god (right) and a standing worshipper
(left). This figure draws inspiration
from the actual sealings on the
Neo-Sumerian administrative
account BM 111142 (Bramanti apud
Alivernini, forthcoming). Graphic
elaboration by the author.
What’s in a name?
As in the case of many other cultures,
Mesopotamian personal names often have
meanings and can tell modern readers a lot
about the ancient society and daily life. For
example, they can suggest the presence (or
absence) of certain ethnic and linguistic
components of the society. Mesopotamia
was a point of encounter for diverse people
who believed in different gods, had differ-
ent cultures, and even spoke different lan-
guages. This was also true during twenty-
first century BCE, when Sumerian was the
language of the administration but most
common people spoke Akkadian—a com-
pletely unrelated Semitic language—and
plenty of foreigners from modern Iran and
Syria spoke their native languages, Elamite
documentation and administration, see Molina 2016.
7 On the office of the scribe in Early Mesopotamia, see
Visicato 2000.
23
and Amorite, respectively.8
The names of the characters of the tale
also show this diversity. The two main char-
acters, Ur-Enki and Ninheduanna, bear
Sumerian personal names, meaning respec-
tively “the servant of the god Enki” (the Su-
merian god of knowledge and creation) and
“the lady, ornament of the god An” (the Su-
merian god of heaven). The same is valid for
the unnamed scribe, whose name in the seal
reads Ur-Ĝidru, “the servant of the divine
scepter”. Enheduanna’s late husband Ilum-
bani bears an Akkadian name, meaning
“god is good”. Last but not least important,
the foreign slave Kiriri bears an Elamite
name, meaning “the man of the goddess”.
Law and order
As can be easily imagined, crimes are not a
modern invention. Since the most ancient
times, people have tried to make the most
profit out of every situation, sometimes at
others’ expense. Theft,9 burglary, murder,
and every sort of crime and misdemeanor
were commonplace. Collections of judicial
cases were compiled in an attempt to pro-
vide some justice on the basis of exempla-
ry cases that had already been solved. The
principle is similar to modern common law,
which is based on applying legal precedent
to present and future decisions.10
The most famous Mesopotamian collec-
tion of cases is the so-called Code of Ham-
murapi (eighteenth century BCE), which
also contains legal provisions that regulate
various aspects of daily life. Nonetheless,
legal texts concerning not only solutions
of crimes but also marriages, divorces, di-
visions of inheritances, sales of estates and
slaves, damage compensation claims etc.
were already common during the third mil-
lennium. In the twenty-first century BCE,
8 On onomastics in the Ancient Near East, see Streck
and Weninger 2002. More recently, on Sumerian
personal names, see Balke 2017.
9 On thefts of barley in the twenty-first century BCE,
see D’Agostino, forthcoming.
10 For an introduction to Mesopotamian law, see Roth
1997.
Armando Bramanti
Barley, They Wrote
these cases were related in specific docu-
ments which always started with the same
Sumerian words: di-til-la, which mean “the
case is closed”.11
Literature
Most of the cuneiform texts in our posses-
sion deal with everyday matters like trans-
actions of goods, land administration,
private contracts, and legal cases. Never-
theless, literature still plays a huge role
in the Mesopotamian culture, and ranges
from epics and novels (like the epic of Gil-
gamesh), through creation myths (like the
Atra-̮hasis, or the Babylonian flood myth),
to every kind of incantation.12
In the tale, the first literary excerpt is
taken from a first millennium ritual against
infertility in which a woman embraces a
date palm and recites the spell. Often con-
sidered a symbol of fertility because of its
load of dates, the palm was also a common
metaphor for beauty. The second literary
citation comes from a second millennium
poem celebrating the sacred marriage of
the gods Nanay and Muati. Explicit refer-
ences to sex are not uncommon in love lyr-
ics, where women (and goddesses) do not
hide their sexual drive.13
11 For an introduction to this specific genre of Sumerian
texts in the twenty-first century BCE, see Pomponio
2008.
12 For an overview of the Sumerian and Akkadian
literature, see Rubio 2009 and Foster 2005,
respectively.
13 The full text of these two literary excerpts can be
found in Foster 2005, 160–161 (love lyrics) and 980
(ritual against infertility).
24
 Evolution of the sign for palm from
its referent (left), through the proto-
cuneiform pictographic form (end of
fourth millennium BCE, in the center),
to the cuneiform sign (Neo-Sumerian
period, right). The same sign can be
read in Sumerian both ĝišnimbar and
sa6, which mean respectively “date
palm” and “(to be) beautiful”. Graphic
elaboration by the author.

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Province during the Neo-Sumerian Period (Biblioteca del
Próximo Oriente Antiguo 12). Madrid: CSIC, 2015.

Fiandra, Enrica. “Porte e chiusure di sicurezza nell’Antico

Oriente.” Ministero per beni e le attività culturali –
Bollettino d’Arte LXVII/6 (1982). 1–18.

Foster, Benjamin R. Before the Muses. An Anthology of

Akkadian Literature. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005.

Maekawa, Kazuya. “Cultivation of Legumes and mun-gazi

Plants in Ur III Girsu.” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 2
(1985). 97–118.

Molina, Manuel. “Archives and Bookkeeping in Southern

Mesopotamia during the Ur III Period.” Comptabilités 8
(2016). http://comptabilites.revues.org/1980 (accessed in
May 2020).

ORTO 25
This publication has taken shape gradually, through rapid
email exchanges and long video calls. Work began in March
and ends in summer, just a step away from the end of the
residence of the authors of the eleven contributions, with
their personal and professional involvement. The garden,
intended as a real place and a metaphorical place, is the
starting point shared by researchers and artists to display
a fragment of their theoretical studies, their reflections and
their artistic activity. In some cases, the theme is used as a
lens to study the socio-cultural context in detail; more often
than not it is interpreted in an intimate and private dimen-
sion, more subjective than objective. To render this variety
correctly, the editorial format chosen is one able to hold to-
gether heterogeneous material, like a magazine, in which the
order of the contributions is determined by what goes well
with what and what follows on naturally from what. One out
of the eleven was written by two authors together and is the
fruit of a common purpose shared by two researchers, an an-
thropologist and a historian. Like a magazine, this publica-
tion does not claim to be comprehensive but rather marks
a passage, captures a moment. Residence is an experience
that has an end and its intensity may be more or less effec-
tive. A group of people reach a given place and undertake
to leave their mark; the marks then trigger a process, which
is translated here into the two-dimensional space of a page,
and we must ask ourselves whether this collective reflection
generates a new way of creating culture.
I looked and looked for an idea or an image able to convey
the multiplicity of attitudes and positions in the group and
I finally found one in the reflections published by the critic
and curator Nicolas Bourriaud. In his essay Radicant: Pour
une esthétique de la globalisation (Denoël, Collection Média-
tions, Paris 2009), the author uses the world of plants to in-
troduce the word radicant, to interpret those who live in the
contemporary moment. Plants that belong to the botanical
family of the radicants develop their roots as they advance,
unlike the radicals, whose development is determined by
their being anchored in a particular soil. For example: a tree
is a radical whereas ivy is a radicant, since it adapts to its
host surface and conforms to its twists and turns. Sliding
smoothly from the world of plants to the world of humans,
Bourriaud interprets the contemporary individual as a radi-
cant because he is torn between the need for ties with his en-
vironment and the uprooting forces, between the propensity
towards others and continuously defining his own identity
and individuality.

Rome, 10 July 2020

Saul Marcadent

139
Biographies Armando Bramanti obtained a PhD in Assyriolo-
gy in a joint program between Sapienza–Univer-
sity of Rome and Friedrich-Schiller-Universität
Jena (2017). After numerous pre- and postdoc
research stays in Italy, Germany, Spain, US, and
Switzerland, he will be working at CSIC in Madrid.
His main research interests concern Sumerian
administration and cuneiform palaeography. He
is also a passionate writer, singer, and musician.

Johanna Bruckner is an artist based in Zurich.

Her work relates to ecologies of trust, care and
labor. She unsettles notions on the non/human
body, intimacies and emotional worlds produced
by the ongoing transformation of technology. Her
work asks how the indeterminacy of being might
inform hybrid temporalities better tooled to deal
with current technological, political and ecolog-
ical changes.

Romeo Dell’Era obtained in 2017 a Master’s

Degree in Archaeology, Ancient History and
Latin at the University of Lausanne. He is now a
PhD candidate at the University of Lausanne and
Sapienza University of Rome with a grant from
the Swiss National Science Foundation. His the-
sis deals with Roman inscriptions in the Alps.

Francesco Dendena is a historian of the

Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. Following his
PhD at the EHESS, Paris on the Feuillant move-
ment, he has focused his attention on the social
function of history as much as on its political sig-
nificance in the Enlightenment age. Currently, he
is interested in the process of cultural transfers
between France and the Italian Peninsula in the
Age of Revolutions, in particular in bookselling.

Pauline Julier is an artist and filmmaker. Through

her work, she is interested in the links humans
weave with their environment through stories,
rituals, scientific knowledge or images. Her films
and installations assemble documentary ele-
ments by borrowing as much from theory as
from fiction.

Dominique Laleg works on philosophy, art

and politics. He took his PhD from eikones–
Center for the History and Theory of the Image
at the University of Basel. Since 2017 he has
been teaching at the University of Vienna, the
University of Basel and the Lucerne University

140
of Applied Sciences and Arts. Since 2019 he
has been a research fellow at the ISR and the
Bibliotheca Hertziana.
Charlotte Matter completed an MA in art
history and film studies at the University of
Zurich. She is carrying out doctoral research
on the use of plastics in artistic practices
of the 1960s and 1970s, with a particular fo-
cus on women artists and critics, including
case studies on Carla Accardi and Lea Lublin.
During the academic year of 2019/2020, she was
a fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max Planck
Institute for Art History in Rome.
watch into its individual parts. When it lies in front
of him in its individual fragments, he looks for
ways to put the pieces back together differently
or to combine them with new elements in order
to render them into spatial configurations.
Anaïs Wenger’s artistic practice questions the
notions of performance and narration through a
variety of forms and situations. Her proposals as-
sume the subjectivity to which we are all and al-
ways condemned: whoever attempts to become
the transmitter of a signal must agree to be both
its conducting material and its interferer.

Nastasia Meyrat explores empathy through

different forms. The artist creates sculptural
environments that propose a plurality of “living
bodies”. Humoristic and tragic, these break from
expected roles and transcend the boundaries of
normative representations. States of transfor-
mations like immaturity and “transforming one-
self into an idiot”–as a way to renew one’s gaze
on relationships–are at the core of the artist’s
interests.

Real Madrid is an artist duo founded in 2015 in

Geneva; they use local codes to question cop-
ing strategies around diseases and stigmas.
An interest in miscommunication led to a name
that makes it problematic to spread and track
images of their work on any search engine.
Reappropriating the name from the highly lucra-
tive football franchise, RM brands itself as a mar-
ketable counterfeit commodity.

Kiri Santer is a doctoral candidate at the institute

of social anthropology at the university of Bern,
Switzerland. Her research focuses on legal and
political reconfigurations surrounding the ex-
ternalization of migration control in the central
Mediterranean and beyond. Her thesis examines
the effects of the creation of a Libyan Search and
Rescue Region on responsibility for death at sea.
She has conducted fieldwork at sea, in Tunis,
Brussels and Rome.

Urs August Steiner’s artistic work deals with

concepts such as time or memory and is based
on a broad research in film, architecture and sci-
ence. As part of the process, Steiner dismantles
his material as a watchmaker disassembles a

141
ORTO

This publication is a project conceived

by Istituto Svizzero

Editorial coordination:
Saul Marcadent

Texts: Armando Bramanti,

Johanna Bruckner, Romeo Dell’Era,
Francesco Dendena, Attilia Fattori Franchini,
Pauline Julier, Dominique Laleg, Quinn Latimer,
Charlotte Matter, Nastasia Meyrat, Real Madrid,
Kiri Santer, Urs August Steiner, Anaïs Wenger

Translations:
Maureen S. Friedman (pp. 54–63, 139)
Phillip Hill (pp. 87–106)
Proofreading, copy editing:
Craig Allen

Published and designed by NERO

All texts © the authors

All images © the authors and Istituto Svizzero

All rights reserved. No part of this

publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or
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otherwise, without the prior written
consent of the publisher.

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ISBN: 9788880561040
Printed and bound in July 2020