ON CARRYING AND KNOWING

Eleonora Agostini

The first time Yana, Carl and I arrived in Bosco Chiesanova it was March and we had four days of exploration awaiting us. I did not know anything about Lessinia, despite being born and grewing up relatively close by.
For three days we did not see much of the landscape, it was snowing at night and during the day the fog was so dense that our visual experience was completely compromised. We had to use our imagination while waiting for the landscape to reveal itself.
The visual inaccessibility meant that we had to access the land through its people – those that we met upon our arrival or we read about in books and diaries in which traditions, places and popular legends were told.
Most of the articles and interventions on Lessinia had a male voice.
In On Carrying and Knowing I question the idea that men were and are the only legitimate holders of knowledge within this rural landlascape, and traditonally male oriented field focused on phisical labour and bodily demanding tasks.
Instead, I focused on the female working body as as a site of knowledge and for knowledge, to reflect upon its function within this specific socio – political context.
I met and collaborate with women of different ages, backgrounds and experiences. Some of them grew up in Lessinia, others moved from the cities, some work with animals, others on the land. All of them perform challenging phisical labour with extreme force and care.
These images look on women’s contribution to the land of Lessinia, focusing specifically on the strength, the movements and the gravity of the body in relation to different materials and evironments. Weight plays an important role in the making of these images and in the quests for answers. The photographs show bodies that maintain and uphold, bodies in tension, strong bodies, traces of bodies, heavy bodies, tired bodies, resting bodies.
If having a body means carrying a weight, what kind of weight are we carrying?