Thermocene

There is no such thing as zero impact. This is the background to “Thermocene”, an exhibition by Giorgio Ferrero and Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas) and Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci (EX.), held in several locations and in successive stages. The first, from 5 to 30 March 2025, will be in the city of Turin, at the Ghiacciaie del Mercato Centrale and the Gallerie d'Italia.

“Thermocene” will then continue its journey, involving museums and national and international cultural institutions, starting with a performance in Milan as part of the miart modern and contemporary art fair – from 4 to 6 April – a preview of the exhibition to be held at GAMeC in Bergamo from 7 June to 14 September.

The “Thermocene” project is a journey that weaves together music, architecture, cinema and art – expressed in each of these languages through different media: an exhibition, a documentary film, a book – to explore the concept of cooperation and interconnection of human beings in the age of climate change. 

The work that represents the heart of the project is a visual and sound symphony created by Giorgio Ferrero and Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas) inside two futuristic bivouacs, situated at an altitude of 3000 metres in the Piedmont Alps and designed by EX., a design laboratory created by Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci. 

The two composers, separated by a distance of thirty kilometres, immersed in the glacial solitude of the two camps, lacking all basic services, cooperated actively, transforming the invisible traces of man present in the environment, such as noises and radio waves, into a choral song. The two performers evoke a world in which nature and human beings consciously collaborate in the construction of a new collective awareness. 

In its exhibition form, curated by ARTECO at the Gallerie d'Italia, “Thermocene” is presented through a dual-channel video installation, a preview of the film of the same name produced by KINO Produzioni, currently in the pre-production phase. In the same location, at 6:30 p.m. on Friday 28 March, there will also be a live performance in which the two composers Giorgio Ferrero and Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas) will interact to create a new sound symphony generated by the invisible traces of man collected in high-altitude bivouacs. 

The project aims to poetically and empirically show that it is impossible to imagine a planet without the all-encompassing impact of man. In this sense the concept of zero impact becomes utopian and unattainable. Man is present even where he is invisible, and the awareness of a nature increasingly contaminated by man-made devices will necessarily be at the centre of a new concept of freedom and survival, in an age that we find hard to accept, that of the Thermocene, a term which, unlike Anthropocene, focuses on the habitat and no longer on human beings. As emphasised by Richard Stallman, the visionary activist who coined the term in 2015, the most incisive phenomenon of the geological period we are currently experiencing is, in fact, the increase in temperature caused by human activity.