A great individual and collective growth, meanwhile, was the path that led to the community creation of a festival of Salento's land and community, which will take place at Fattizze d'Arneo (Nardò) from September 15 to 18 next year. These are the words of Ermanno, one of the organizers, who was the spokesperson for a collective presentation of this path, which lasted several months. He adds: Intanto…Riforestival è un grande laboratorio sperimentale di comunità. Born with the simple idea of partying, getting together, and greening small glimpses of the land, over time it has been enriched by many free and spontaneous memberships, which have reshaped its scope and consistency.
Salento confirms itself as a land of great ferment and at the same time of great contradictions. On the one hand, in fact, this southern region of Apulia in the last three decades has seen important ideas and practices flourish from an anthropological, ecological, and artistic point of view and has also experienced a particular economic development linked to a tourism that enhances its environmental and cultural resources.
On the other hand, it has been the subject of new and old speculation that has accentuated atavistic problems and presented new ones: the Xylella bacterium and the abandonment of the land that has favored the desiccation of olive trees; the overlook on the eastern Mediterranean due to which the territory is the object of speculation by energy multinationals with the two gas pipelines Tap and Poseidon; the historical mafias of the territory that are regaining vigor thanks to the attempt, not always successful fortunately, to bring the worst colonialist tourism, and thanks to the business of renewable energies installed in an anti-ecological way; the absence of institutions in so many areas, not the least of which is transportation, where decades of promises by regional governments (which some thought to be friendly, mistakenly) have resulted in a total lack of collective transportation, basically stopped in the 1950s, except for the month of August where it is partially upgraded.
Riforestival does not, however, stand on this in an oppositional and belligerent key as happens in the faux-televised contrasts of mainstream politics; instead, it wants to foster the flowering of community spaces of life and confrontation, that is, to weave relationships and unite what is already being experienced: it wants in simple words to create and foster communities..
That community that is now on the mouths and screens of the entire virtual world of global capitalism, that community of flesh-and-blood human beings that for decades now has been subjected to the attempt to be reduced, precisely, to a virtual community, to atomized individuals and, not surprisingly, to the collective liturgy of the social distancing (never was a more apt term to describe the era of a power system).
Alongside this, as is obvious, the other central theme is that of respect for and harmony with the land where a community is developed: it is no coincidence that space is given throughout the four days of the festival to meetings and workshops on the forms of natural agriculture and the necessary process of reforestation that this territory vitally needs at this time.
But what will happen then to the Riforestival? So many unforeseen things, we hope, but let's try to summarize the program, which can be read and downloaded at the end of the article: individual treatments, group activities, open meetings, screenings, DJ sets and concerts, permaculture workshops, and a natural farming workshop considered the centerpiece of the Festival, namely the two mornings with Kutluhan Ozdemir, from the Natural Farming Center in Edessa, Greece, and now relocated to the Marche region where he practices natural farming.The first part of Kutluhan's workshop will take place during Saturday morning, Principles of Do-Nothing Farming and Creating a Natural Vegetable Garden; the second part will be held on Sunday morning and is titled Non-Doing Agriculture and Reforestation, creation and launch of Seed Balls..
The whole thing will happen inside the forest of the Agricamping Fattizze d’Arneo, a historical place of Salento sociality and linked, not surprisingly, to the mother of all land struggles in Salento, at least in contemporary times, the struggles of Arneo peasants After World War II.
Article by Gianluca Ricciato
Source: La Bottega dei barbieri
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