Poseidonia city of water
Archeology and climate change

Name: Poseidonia city of water
Start: 2019-10-04 00:00:00
End: 2020-09-06 00:00:00
Location: Paestum Archaeological Park

Paestum Archaeological Park

Capaccio, Campania, Italy

Curated by: Paul Carter, Adriana Rispoli, Gabriel Zuchtriegel

The show

What will be the future of memory in a world marked by environmental catastrophes and climate change? The exhibition "Poseidonia city of water: archeology and climate change", which will open on 4 October 2019 at the Archaeological Park of Paestum, revolves around this chilling question - but also stimulating if framed in a perspective of hope and responsibility.

Uniting archaeologists, scientists, writers and contemporary artists, the exhibition, curated by Paul Carter, Adriana Rispoli and Gabriel Zuchtriegel, will tell the story of the territory of Paestum, the Greek Poseidonia, through the relationship between men and the environment, in particular the sea. Fundamental for the elaboration of the theme of the exhibition will be the projections on climate and environmental changes that could affect the Piana del Sele in the next 100 years, elaborated by the Center for Studies on Climate Change in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the technical tests for the video-mapping on the Temple of Neptune by the Neapolitan artist Alessandra Franco, which will be staged as part of the exhibition, have been successfully carried out in these days. Archeology, art and science: all united in an attempt to raise public awareness on a crucial issue.

"After the worrying forecasts published by scientists from all over the world, it is the first exhibition that integrates the discourse on climate change with a historical and archaeological perspective - explain the director of Paestum Gabriel Zuchtriegel and the Anglo-Australian co-curator Paul Carter , author of Turbulence: Climate Change and the Design of Complexity - the goal is to draw attention to a history characterized by imperialist expansion, colonial enslavement, substantial and unsustainable environmental changes and, above all, the capacity of societies human beings to understand unexpected changes, adapt and rebuild themselves. We want to show the relevance of the past for the future: our responsibility as custodians of cultural heritage is the constant reinterpretation of past achievements in the light of what we know and experience in the present ”.

Among the protagonists of the project and of the full-bodied catalog, in addition to archaeologists, historians and scientists, there is also Andrea Marcolongo, author of U na lingua geniale: 9 reasons to love Greek and The heroic measure . In her contribution, the writer highlights the reasons why Poseidonia, the city of Poseidon, god of the sea, is a special place to address the history of the climate and the environment: "Before being associated with the oceans, Poseidon was the god called by Homer and Hesiod gaiéochos , "he who fertilizes the earth", or ennosìgaion, "he who shakes the earth itself with earthquakes".
Here is the first of the paradoxes - there will be many, all fascinating - that we meet by retracing the history of the divinity that gave its name to the city of Poseidonia, founded by Greek colonists who came by ship from Sybaris around 600 BC ".

The idea of the exhibition, which is co-financed by the Campania Region and also includes the creation of cylindrical showcases that with their shape recall the installation dedicated to the Tomb of the Diver by Carlo Alfano, was born in 2018 from a visit by Zuchtriegel to the Galleria Nazionale di Roma, whose director Cristiana Collu is also part of the scientific committee of the exhibition. "When I saw Federico Cortese's painting 'Ruins of a world that was ...', made in 1892, showing the temples of Paestum under water, I was reminded of a study recently published in Nature Communications, in which serious damage is expected caused by sea level rise and coastal erosion in 42 out of 49 UNESCO sites around the Mediterranean analyzed by the authors, including Paestum ”- says Zuchtriegel. The painting will be the only work on display, while the other objects come from the Paestum collections; in part they are objects never exhibited before.