Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Section 3: We have always been totemists. Sheep farming has had a significant impact on the economic development of countries such as England, Spain, or Italy, not to mention Australia, New Zealand, or China. The commercial value of wool is connected to the thickness of the fibres: the finer, the better. This most likely comes from the fact that finer fibres are less itchy on the skin. With selective breeding of finer wool-producing sheep, those flocks that produced coarser fibres were left out. To protect local wool production, several counties between the 17th and 18th centuries established and implemented forms of protectionism. After several countries’ attempts at maintaining a status of leadership in fine wool production, the colonisation of Australia led to an exponential growth of Merino sheep farms, which had consequences both locally and on a global scale. The invention of synthetic fibres, the ever increasing exploitation of territories, peoples, and resources, as well as intensive farming, have recently led Merino wool to become nearly the only commercially valuable wool. In addition to this, upcoming regulations – such as the proposal for the PEF labelling system – pose a further threat to locally produced wool fibres, as it states – in its current state – that woollen fibres are less environmentally sustainable than synthetic ones. Local production of non-merino fibres, despite the challenges, still exists today, and companies such as Zegna prove that they would be an equally appealing material as their Australian counterparts. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra Catalogue | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO “Cosmoecological sheep and the arts of living on a damaged planet” is an essay co-authored by Vinciane Despret and Michel Meuret, which has been re-published on the occasion of Oltre Terra as an edited authors’ version. The original text was first published in the book chapter: Despret V., and M. Meuret. 2019, chapter 41, in: The Design Philosophy Reader, edited by Anne- Marie Willis, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London UK, New-York USA, p. 262–267. Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher of science. She is associate professor at the University of Liège. A foundational thinker for the consolidating field of animal studies, Despret’s transdisciplinary approach is located across philosophy of science, epistemology, and behavioural science. Her research focuses on the relationship between observers and the observed during the conduct of scientific research. Some of her books had been translated in English, as What would animals say if we asked the right questions? and Living as a bird. Michel Meuret is a researcher in animal ecology and director of research at INRAE, the French National Institute for Research on Agriculture, Food and the Environment. For more than 30 years he has studied the behavior of domestic herbivores on natural pastures, in hills and mountains, as well as the knowledge and practices of breeders and shepherds. All his work has been carried out in multidisciplinary teams, which has also allowed him to address public policy issues that involve livestock for purposes such as forest fire prevention or better conservation of remarkable biodiversity. Michel has been invited to teach at universities as well as at herding schools. The catalogue is available online at Buchhandlung Walther König. Images: 1-3-5: Formafantasma, seasonal transhumance from Austria to Italy, 2022, Val Senales, South Tyrol, Italy. Photos: @gregoriogonella @cellizard @nimportekii 2-4-6: scans from Oltre Terra catalog #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Section 2: We all need other species to live. 1- Wolf trap cam, MUSE - Museo delle Scienze, Trento, 2015-2016, Italy. Wolves have recently gained a controversial reputation among wildlife conservationists and shepherds, as well as in popular culture. On the one hand, wolves are seen as an endangered wild species that must be protected. On the other, they are feared for being dangerous predators that threaten livestock domestic species. Despite having been almost entirely artificially extirpated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, as human activity decreased, together with the abandonment of traditional livestock practices, these areas experienced a resurgence of natural processes and ecosystem recovery, including the return of apex predators like wolves. 2 - Lorenzo Possenti @lore.poss Agrimonia eupatoria dry seeds reproduction, 2023, styrofoam, resin. Ripe burrs of agrimony, Agrimonia eupatoria, can adhere to the wool of sheep. A burr is a type of seed capsule surrounded by prickly hooked bracts which are carried away by sticking onto the fur of passing animals, thus migrating to new territories. 3 - Alexandre Delmar @alexandre_delmar A Fala das Cabras e dos Pastores, 2015 (in progress), Portugal, 2 channel film. With the project A Fala das Cabras e dos Pastores artist Alexandre Delmar aims to investigate and map the vocalisations used by shepherds to interact with grazing animals in several districts of Portugal. Here, the artist tries to identify the mannerisms and the protolanguage used by humans to communicate with herded animals. 5 - Joanna Piotrowska @janka_piotrowska Transhumance in the Alps, 2023, Val Senales, Italy, film. The Val Senales transhumance is one of the few cross-border and trans-glacial transhumances still being practiced in Italy today. Today, such transnational movements are more and more limited, due to geo-political forces, which often do not coincide with the geographical gradients of ecological niches necessary for pastoralist activities. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Section 2: We all need other species to live. Pastoralism is the expression of the symbiotic relationship between humans, animals, plants, and the environment, representing a millenarian practice that sees the co-existence of all of its parts. Transhumance, the seasonal movement between mountains (in the summer) and flatlands (in the winter), is one of the few remaining nomadic practices still active today in Europe. Co-domestication takes place at different scales and between various species: plants, such as the agrimonia eupatoria, can colonise new territories when they get entangled in sheep’s wool; shepherd dogs have mastered astonishing skills to manage and collaborate with the flock. The environment also plays a crucial role: sheep breeds such as the Ciuta have evolved to live in mountainous areas. Their light weight and agility makes them suitable to the difficult environment of the Alps, contributing to keeping beneficial levels of biodiversity within the ecosystem. Through pastoralism, humans have developed devices to interface with animals. Sheep bells and shepherd crooks have become an extension of the shepherd’s sensorial apparatus. Similarly, they have also learned how to communicate with sheep and dogs, through noises, sounds, and whistles. Wolves, inhabitants of the same mountainous areas, are at the centre of debates between those who wish to protect them, and those who see them as a threat to flocks. Despite having been almost entirely artificially extirpated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the reappearance of wolves over the last decades is directly connected to the changing socio-economic factors and shifting demographics that have led to the depopulation of remote mountainous areas. Transhumant shepherds today are facing increasing difficulties, related to their economic sustainability, and the ever growing fragmentation and privatisation of the lands. Transhumance is also threatened today by the increasing problems connected to climate change. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra Catalogue | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO In this chapter, Formafantasma dialogues with Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra about his primary interest in the domestication process and the evolution of animal morphology and diversity. Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra is a professor of paleobiology and is the director of the paleontological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich. He is widely published in his field and is the author of several books. His most recent book, “The Process of Animal Domestication”, presents a broad synthesis of this subject, from the rich biology behind the initial stages of domestication to how the creation of breeds reflects cultural and societal transformations that have impacted the biosphere. The interview is available online at oltreterra.website or from Formafantasma’s homepage. The catalogue is available online at Buchhandlung Walther König. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm Images: 1-4: styrofoam and resin animal reproductions at @lore.poss workshop (disclaimer: all the animal and animal parts are handmade sculptures. No real animal parts were used in the process). Photos: @gregoriogonella 2-3-5: scans from Oltre Terra catalog

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Section 1: It is impossible to know who seduced whom. Images: 1 - Lendbreen tunic, wool diamond twill, 200 - 400 AD. Loan from Museum of Cultural History / University of Oslo, Norway. Rapid melting of the Lendbreen ice patch due to global warming has made several ancient artefacts emerge from ice. In pre-historic times, there was a passage across Lendbreen in the northern part of Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. This 1700-year-old woollen tunic was found in 2011, and represents an early example of woven wool made of fibres from the natural moulting of sheep, which, at the time, had not yet genetically evolved to maintain the coat, and thus need manual shearing. 2 - Shearing scissors, metal, different periods. Loan from Jærmuseet, Norway. For centuries, the use of wool shears has been recorded all over the world, and their design looks virtually identical to those sold at an ironmonger’s today. Shearing scissors epitomize the relationship that has evolved between sheep and humans throughout domestication. While some ancient sheep breeds had the tendency to shed their fleece naturally, others would drop it only partially. 3 - Formafantasma and Joanna Piotrowska. Turning Wool Into Yarn By Hand, 2023, film. The microscopic structure of wool fibres facilitates the creation of yarn. When handling raw wool, it just takes a simple movement of the fingers to make the fibres adhere and form a basic yarn. Thanks to the scale-like structure of the fibres’ surface, friction and movement make individual wool strands cling to one another. 4 - Experimental sheep shearing combs and cutters, before 1938. Loan from Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Australia. These 28 combs and cutters are evidence of a multi-player experimental program that began in the 1800s and continues today. Determining the right shape for these key components of sheep shears has depended on trial and error rather than scientific analysis. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Emanuele Coccia’s take on section one: “For millennia, the human species has had a privileged relationship with sheep: we want them to be all over us all the time. It was their hair that triggered everything. For more than 10,000 years now, we have been asking sheep to lend us their mantle. It is hard to imagine a stronger intimacy, hard to imagine a more radical generosity on the part of a being that knows nothing about us. What does it mean to give your fleece to someone? If this exchange is possible, it is because there is something special about the fiber structure of their mantle. Their hairs are different from ours. It only takes a few movements of our hands to turn them into yarn. They are perfect for making garments, a kind of second skin that allowed us to explore and live in previously hostile environments. It is with the spinning of wool that the earth’s geography expanded. Humans started weaving everything: not only clothes but also carpets, containers, decorations and even sails. The interspecies love affair between humans and sheep not only changed the course of history, it went so far as to cause a profound transformation of the physiology of sheep. They went from having an annual molt to a mantle with continuously growing fibers and this change demanded the establishment of an interspecies agreement, a bond based on care: humans trusted sheep to provide food and wool while sheep trusted humans for protection from predators and to be sheared regularly.” #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm Formafantasma team: @gregoriogonella @cellizard @sarabaril

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Section 1: It is impossible to know who seduced whom. This section explores the history of sheep domestication in relation to wool. In contrast to wild mouflons, which shed fleece seasonally, domestic sheep have lost this genetic trait. It is not clear whether, throughout domestication, the loss of this trait has been triggered by human influence, or vice versa if humans developed wool shearing tools in response to sheep’s evolution. Thanks to the physical properties of wool, it became fairly easy to felt it, and consequently to create a yarn, weave or knit it, thus enabling humans to produce clothes, blankets, tents, tapestries, among other artefacts. Wool made it possible for humans to explore and settle in previously inaccessible places, from seas to mountains, thanks warm clothes or woollen sails. As a result, sheep also spread uniformly worldwide. Humans and sheep both benefit from this relationship, while it is impossible to trace a unilateral willing in the formation of this relation of co-domestication. Shearing wool benefits humans to harvest an important material, and it is vital for sheep as it would grow endlessly otherwise. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra Website | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO oltreterra.website is online! The website of Oltre Terra collects the archival material that has been gathered during the research of the project. In addition to providing a textual and visual guide of each section of the exhibition, it also stores supplementary relevant media in the form of texts, interviews, references for articles and books, photographs, and archival material. The website thus expands on the physical exhibition, presenting the tools necessary to critically engage with the topics explored within Oltre Terra. Oltre Terra’s website is accessible from: oltreterra.website, or from Formafantasma’s homepage. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #website @nasjonalmuseet

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra Catalogue | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO This catalogue is published on the occasion of our exhibition Oltre Terra at The National Museum of Norway in Oslo on view from May 26th to October 1st 2023. The research for Oltre Terra has been undertaken via conversations and collaborations with a variety of different practitioners such as designers, artists, anthropologists, evolutionists, legal experts, curators, shepherds and farmers. The catalogue collects research material in the form of interviews, commissioned essays, re-published texts, and visual material. The publication aims at unravelling the complexities of the co-domestication and symbiosis between animals, humans, and the environment. Moreover, it offers the tools necessary to critically engage with the body of knowledge that has formed and informed our understanding of wool extraction, transhumant pastoralist practices, animal welfare, farming as a tool for colonialism, as well as many other fields we confronted within the research. The catalogue is published by Buchhandlung Walther König and designed by Studio Joost Grootens @studiojoostgrootens and @dimitrijeannottat. The book includes contributions by: Badger Bates, Luca Battaglini, Elena Ciani, Hamish Chandler, Vinciane Despret, Hanne Eide, Formafantasma, Tim Ingold, Ingun Klepp, Lottozero @lottozero, Ewan McEoin @ewanmceoin, Michel Meuret, Marco Paganoni @patrimont_valtellina, Alessandro Rabottini @alessandro.rabottini, Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, Kari Weil, Tim White @exlanasheep. Publication editors: Hanne Eide @hanne_eide, Kristian Wikborg Wiese, Alessandro Celli @cellizard, Andrea Trimarchi, Simone Farresin, Gregorio Gonella @gregorio.gonella , Rebecca Lewin @rebeccasophielewin Formafantasma Team: Gregorio Gonella, Alessandro Celli, Sara Barilli @sarabaril The catalogue is available online at Buchhandlung Walther König. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #catalogue @nasjonalmuseet

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Oltre Terra is a relational exhibition, focusing on the deep symbiotic entanglement between all of its parts. To achieve this, a deconstructive approach is necessary to undermine the current categorisations between human and animal, product and biological matter. A starting point for the design of the exhibition has been critically analysing how dioramas – usually in use in natural history museums to represent nature – are conceived. Their construction follows a traditional identification of a background and a foreground, object and subject, and fails to represent the complex interactions between species and their mutual in-becoming relation to the landscape.The viewer is invited to look at the scene from a position of safety, behind the glass, while drawing the attention to simplified images of the “wild” and “exotic” nature in display. In this sense, the domestic and the domesticated are not part of the diorama, as they are perceived as the fruit of human intelligence, thus outside of the natural world encaged in the glass walls of the diorama. Oltre Terra aims at unravelling this attempt of making sense of nature, where everything that is subjected to human intentionality isn’t contextualized or seen in relation to the natural. Instead, by exploding the diorama, it strives to highlight and enhance the mutual entanglements present between human and non-human animals, as well as the landscape in its broader sense. In the format of a visual essay, the installation invites the visitor to engage with a narrative that investigates the triumph of modern science and technology in all its acts of environmental instability. Philosopher Emanuele Coccia @unicamens wrote extensive captions per section that offer an interpretation of these heterogenous materials and their interconnections. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet

Formafantasma, Oltre Terra | NAM Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo NO Oltre Terra is an ongoing investigation conducted by Formafantasma focused on the history, ecology, and global dynamics of the extraction and production of wool in relation to the biological evolution of sheep. The wider installation of Oltre Terra is a critical take on the display mode of the diorama. While dioramas proved to be a popular and effective way to represent animals in the context of exhibition-making, they also contributed to the consolidation of a partial and unrealistic representation of nature. Fragmented into discrete scenes and specially confined to the boundaries of the glass cage, dioramas speak of “other” geographies defined from a Western position, where the wild is also the foreign and the exotic, hence fascinating to look at. Domestic and domesticated animals are then not part of this discourse, because they are considered to be the fruit of human intelligence, or at least tamed by it: the sheep is never going to be represented in a diorama because metaphorically it sits too close to the observer, on this side of the glass. Oltre Terra is a design response to the above and attempts to look at the extraction and production of wool in relation to the biological evolution of sheep as a unified but complex ecology. Commonly used in natural history museums to represent a static scene from nature, here the diorama is exploded, containing six reproductions of different sheep breeds, as well as documents, films, by-products of production processes and various types of organic matter. Materials, techniques and living creatures are presented together to counteract the current categorisations that separate human and animal, product and biological matter. Extensive captions, written by philosopher Emanuele Coccia @unicamens, offer an interpretation of these heterogenous materials and their interconnections. The exhibition features life-size sheep reproductions made by scientific sculptor and painter Lorenzo Possenti @lore.poss, founder of Ecofauna. #formafantasma #oltreterra #NAMoslo #nasjonalmuseet #design #research #wool #exhibition @nasjonalmuseet @fondazioneinbetweenartfilm