Symbiotic Relations at Ca’ Inua: Farming, Exhibitions, and Social Engagement. A Conversation with the Artist Collective Panem et Circenses (Ludovico Pensato and Alessandra Ivul)

Abstract

Our contribution discusses the practice of Panem et Circenses (Alessandra Ivul and Ludovico Pensato), an art collective whose work revolves around food and agriculture. After founding Panem et Circenses in Berlin, Ivul and Pensato opened an artist-run exhibition space devoted to food-based practices in Bologna. Since 2017, they have lived at Ca’ Inua, a farm in Marzabotto, on the Bologna Apennines. Ivul and Pensato see their experimentation with regenerative and sustainable farming as a form of performance art, an embodiment of their engagement with philosophy and theory. Their work participates in discourses—with a range of variations that build on Indigenous sciences/knowledges, posthumanist and new materialist philosophies, and environmental arts and humanities—that recenter symbiosis, relationality, and human/more-than-human entanglements. Our methodological approach relies on critical, art historical, and visual studies tools and is informed by ethnographic observations on site as well as an interview with the artists published here. We begin to address the specificity of Panem et Circenses’ relationship with the lands that they care for and locate their experience in the larger landscape of Art Farming practices. Panem et Circenses translate theoretical frameworks into everyday interactions, hands-on activities, community-building, and long-term planning for the ecology of Ca’ Inua.