The practice of contemporary artists is sometimes similar to the methodology of the researcher of the past. The creators engaged in the discovery of history, generate images of memory using historically or biologically similar methods, among which archival research, archaeological excavations and botanical experiments are a full-fledged artistic method. The reason for the work of Sława Harasymowicz is the nearby history, in which the members of her family and herself participated. Thierry Oussou has recently become famous for the excavation mystic that triggered the diplomatic incident. In his artistic work, Michael Wang raises global themes: climate change and economics. Their projects level the artistic and research work with the process. They reject the dictates of the objectivity, and linearity of the story. The method chosen by them, the questions posed and comments made by commentators are included in the discourse of contemporary humanities, in which the human subject has been included in the system of dependencies between animals, plants, and machines.
In this study I reflect upon the project Da quassùètutta un’altra cosa (From Above It Is Something Different Altogether), executed by Rotor in 2018 in Palermo, for the Manifesta 12 European Nomadic Biennial. The Belgian collective of architects and designers attempted to recycle a site and a space in order to give it back to the inhabitants. Pizzo Sella, a picturesque slope in the vicinity of Palermo, is the location in question, where developers began erecting a housing estate in the 1980s. But the construction was never completed, and the artists turned the hollow concrete structures, which are marks of trauma today, into platform-like viewpoints, so producing a unique experience. A reversed perspective, besides offering magnificent outlooks, may contribute to reinstating the human and nature symbiosis. The success of the chosen method is a result of an empathetic research attitude to the materials found in the area. Repurposing destroyed buildings is, to me, an example of the ancient practice of appropriation referred to as spolia. Those I wish to define broadly: as secondary, or reclaimed substances that make cognition possible for a body situated in a relation with the world.