The Mountain Touch

The title of this exhibition was prompted by personal inspiration during the pandemic period and the concurrent reading of Losing Eden. Why Our Minds Need the Wild by the writer Lucy Jones.
The easing of restrictions which had forced millions of people to be confined to their homes generated unprecedented images that had a profound effect on me. All of a sudden, people were crowding mountain areas, parks and coastlines, anywhere that the physical and mental breath choked by the stress of the pandemic and urban reclusion might flow freely, fully and alive once more. The words of Ruyu Hung, which guided the construction of the Ecophilia. Exploring Otherness, Developing Empathy exhibition (conceived before the pandemic and presented at Museomontagna in 2021), unexpectedly came true.
What was driving all these people to natural surroundings was not simply a physical need to escape the enclosed spaces but an instinctive primordial call to be in nature.
Here was the concept of ecophilia.1 Here we have today’s human being, a digital technocapitalist totally disconnected from the natural world, satisfying a, partly rational and partly biological, call to come into direct contact with natural matter. Matter that is visible, wherever observable and scientifically explained, and, probably to an even greater degree, imperceptible, and capable of exercising a restorative action on our bodies and minds.

Arguing that the Superorganism of which we form part can have a beneficial effect on humans might sound like an animistic belief, the fruit of collective influence or some heretic legacy more closely linked to magic than to reality. However, in-depth scientific investigations into the subject have been ongoing for about forty years. It was Rober Ulrich, in 1984, who initiated the first research along these lines, carrying out experiments aimed at “measuring” how exposure to natural elements was a vector for stress recovery and for healing processes.

These studies originated in Japan where, since 2005, researchers such as Prof. Qing Li have been analysing the positive impact that time spent in a forest is able to produce on our bodies and minds. The response to technostress which has characterised Japanese society, in particular, since the 1980s led to the birth of Shinrin-yoku, or Forest bathing, as a therapeutic remedy and means of warding off the negative consequences produced in people by life today. British nurse Florence Nightingale is considered the founder of modern medical care and more than 100 years earlier, in 1859, she had already written of the contribution nature makes to healing processes, albeit without being able to prove her claim with scientific methods. Referring to observations on patients in her care, she said in her Notes on Nursing: “I have seen, in fevers (and felt, when I was a fever patient myself), the most acute suffering produced from the patient (in a hut) not being able to see out of window […] I shall never forget the rapture of fever patients over a bunch of bright-coloured flowers. I remember (in my own case) a nosegay of wild flowers being sent me, and from that moment recovery becoming more rapid” (sic).2

Perhaps even more mindfully, Nightingale spoke of the role played by fresh air and sunlight, capable of producing real and tangible effects on the human body. The nurse observed that “almost all patients lie with their faces turned to the light, exactly as plants…” and “Put the pale withering plant and human being into the sun, and, if not too far gone, each will recover health and spirit”.3

Florence Nightingale believed “…nature is stronger than fashionable physicians”,4 while, in the same years, Frederick Law Olmsted, a landscape architect and US urbanist who designed Central Park in New York in the mid-19th century, was writing that “It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character […] is favorable to the health and vigor of men”.5

Although not demonstrated by scientific rigour, such claims have been voiced for a long time. Today, however, many more studies (particularly in America and Japan) containing data gathered in thorough large-scale experiments link exposure to nature to a lesser prevalence of allergies, autoimmune diseases and high stress levels, and improved cardiovascular function and haemodynamic, neuroendocrine, metabolic and oxidative indices as well as boosting mental processes and wellbeing.
Meanwhile, again in Japan, the national health system has adopted the practice of Shinrin-yoku as an actual medical therapy. Since 2021, walks in close contact with nature have also become a treatment in the United Kingdom, one which doctors can medically prescribe. More recently, on 31 January 2022, Canada announced its support for PaRx, a national “prescription for nature” programme and doctors can now prescribe its therapeutic treatment for their patients. The PaRx commitment to improving patient health was recently recognised by the World Health Organization in its COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health.

Numerous research fronts are active in this sphere. Some of them, explored via a number of informative-scientific contributions, are examined in the exhibition in relation to the works displayed by Federica Zabini and Francesco Meneguzzo, researchers at the CNR Institute of BioEconomy.
I shall merely cite some of them.

In 1964, Australian researchers Isabel J. Bear and Richard G. Thomas published an article in Nature6 magazine in which they adopt the term “petrichor” – petros (rock) and ichor (blood of the gods) – to describe the smell of rain on arid ground. This olfactory phenomenon, made possible by the atmospheric aerosol recorded by the two scientists, originates from the diffusion in the air of essential oils (previously produced by plants), fungi spores, bacteria and the 7 present in geological matter.

More recently, scientists at MIT in Boston8 demonstrated that a greater quantity of aerosol is produced on porous rocks when the rain falls slowly rather than quickly because these conditions give the air trapped in the geological matter time to emerge from the mineral and vaporise in the air.
In little urbanised areas such as the mountains, geosmin predominates over the presence of ozone in the air and so is more intensely perceived. This is why we immediately perceive that particular smell of the ground from the moment rainfall approaches when we are in the mountains. Numerous studies worldwide are analysing the positive effects of petrichor and geosmin on human brain activity. Researchers at the School of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in South Korea and at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior of Stony Brook University in New York have concluded that they are able to generate deep-rooted emotions that calm the mind and alleviate anxiety.

Recent studies have also been conducted on M. Vaccae bacteria, present in the earth, and on its anti-inflammatory power;9 on birdsong and the sound of the wind, capable of reducing stress and rebalancing the nervous system;10 on the role played by the smell of cedarwood in stimulating parasympathetic nervous activity which slows down the heart rate, leading to a physiological state of relaxation; and on the power of fractals, the visual stimulation of which helps restore human brain function by activating brain plasticity.11 Abundant scientific research also records the effects of Forest bathing, which impacts on cardiovascular and metabolic parameters,12 and that the presence of phytoncides emitted by trees and plants has an ability to boost the immune system, increasing the “natural killer” cells and intercellular levels of anti-cancer proteins.13 A recent study conducted by a number of Japanese researchers recorded that contact with a forest can have significant impact on physical and mental relaxation in hypertensive humans.14 Another study currently underway, proposed by Alessandro Vercelli and Paola Rocca of the University of Turin, explores the preventive and therapeutic role of “green” (trees, meadows, forests, parks…) and “blue” (lakes, rivers, coastal waters …) environments in the development of certain neuropsychiatric pathologies and on the associated need for drugs. Examining patients suffering from depression and schizophrenia, the project will assess the importance of living in urban environments close to green or blue spaces for mental health, and what types of green spaces matter most for mental wellbeing.
Similar studies have been conducted in the past, for example by Jolanda Maaes and other researchers who proved the link between green spaces and wellbeing, particularly in children and the weaker socioeconomic groups.15

In 2012, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign analysed the way in which the vision of the vegetation present in nature has extraordinarily beneficial effects on a number of subjects suffering from what has been called nature-deficit disorder.16 Richard Louv speaks of “nature-deficit disorder” when describing how being deprived of contact with nature makes us vulnerable to a wide range of negative outcomes for our health.
The list, which could go on and on, bears witness to a growing scientific interest in this sphere.17

The Mountain Touch, exhibition, featuring an art-science approach, cannot provide sure answers on the subject but it does raise a number of questions.
What impact may the environmental devastation underway have on our future health? How can recourse to ecotherapy overcome eco-alienation? What role is played by experiences such as mountain therapy, forest therapy, the now familiar Shinrin-yoku or forest bathing and biophilic design plus that of city parks in combatting nature-deficit disorder and psychoterratic mental illnesses?

As Florence Williams writes in The Nature Fix, the human race is transforming from Homo Sapiens to “Metro sapiens”18 with forecasts predicting that two billion people will move to big cities over the next thirty years, increasing the number of inhabitants living in urban areas to 75%. Unless accompanied by a biophilic approach that integrates human life and nature, the urbanisation process will produce a progressive expansion of cities at the expense of the natural resources required to fuel this growth.
In the future, might our lack of contact with the natural universe favour even greater turmoil in our mental and physical health?
How will the further increases in scientific knowledge in this sphere condition the role played by the mountain environment in years to come? Can we imagine how the further degradation of the forests, droughts, thawing alpine glaciers, modified landscapes, loss of natural sounds such as birdsong and the mountain waterfall and the absence of water in streams, rivers and lakes may impact on our mental and physical health in the near future?

Trying to provide an answer to such questions is an ongoing challenge for the scientific world and an opportunity to expand our knowledge of the world we live in.
Mountain and metro-mountain areas play a crucial role in Italy where, according to ISTAT data, the land is 35% mountainous and 41.6% hilly. These places contain the largest number of natural environments and the most biodiversity.
Living in the mountains is a major challenge today but also an extraordinary opportunity. Observing the phenomenon of their repopulation, also via the lens of the healthy dimension it can offer, signifies seeing the mountain areas as spaces not only for leisure time, sports or new lifestyles outside the large built-up areas but as true therapeutic laboratories. The mountains, with their natural riches, can become the voice of a nature that constitutes therapy for the human mind and body, as too an antidote to the biological annihilation produced.19

It is through this gaze and awareness that the artworks in The Mountain Touch aims to promulgate a biocentric awareness and an interspecies sensitivity, emphasising the indissoluble blending between human and other than human, between living and non-living, visible and invisible. The works displayed, some born out of direct dialogue with the world of science and others produced specifically for this project, stimulate observation of the mountain environment and the natural universe with our eyes wide open. Visual, sound, olfactory and tactile experiences invite visitors to venture into unknown worlds, in which to live moments of multisensorial connection with nature and through which to reflect on the invisible and unexplored potential it conceals.

My heartfelt thanks go to the artists, as well as to the researchers whose artistic and intellectual contributions made this exhibition possible.