Ash represents the corruptible condition of man and is a symbol of penance. Throughout the ages, across different cultures and religions, it’s used to evoke death, transience, repentance, but also purification and resurrection. The ashes express, at the same time, the intensity of believers' prayer for forgiveness and the Phoenix Arab’s resilience who rises from it. In these terms Pier Alfeo uses it - stripping it of its timeless dimension to clothe it with an ‘eternal now’ that anchors it to the present - as a cry to be addressed to contemporary society so that it may wake up from its torpor and open its eyes to the harmful effects of anthropization on nature. The time has come for man to stop and listen. Thanks to CC.beta, Nature communicates with us, its audience. By means of a system composed of a probe and an installation, even infinitely distant places - in real time, by web - send and receive data from surveys carried out on noise pollution and air quality: constant remote monitoring of mutations and/or environmental alterations in the area where the device is located. Technology becomes, therefore, a virtuous instrument in the hands of man to reverse the course of his destiny, to begin an exchange and interaction, this time fruitful, with that same nature that he’s leading to collapse. "CC.beta" intends to focus fully on the analysis and on the continuous assistance of a specific place to protect and to safeguard, and to create a bridge between art and awareness, environment and technology, sound and listening.

Work commissioned by the Apulian curator Lia De Venere and by the Teca del Mediterraneo Library of the Regional Council of Apulia as promoter of the "Di terra di mare di cielo" project, conceived by the Etra Ets Cultural Association.

Text : Maria Chiara Wang