What is art’s role in promoting change and encouraging discussions on global issues? In what way can Art, Nature, and Technology help us rethink our relationship with the world around us?

Art, the natural world, human behavior, and mediating technologies are at the heart of an interactional system that manifests, to an increasing degree, the fragility of the planet’s ecosystems and the need for new critical and transdisciplinary practices.

Scientific Panel

FRANCESCA TAROCCO

Francesca Tarocco is the director of  THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) and a Full Professor at the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Tarocco received her master’s and PhD from SOAS, University of London, where she taught for many years.

For the past twenty-five years she has conducted extensive research in Asia with support from institutions such as the Leverhulme Trust and the Terra Foundation, among many others. Before joining Ca’ Foscari, she also taught at New York University Shanghai and the University of Manchester. She has also been a visiting professor at the Asia Pacific Institute at New York University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Edinburgh, and at the Center for Global Asia at New York University Shanghai.

Her interdisciplinary research and teaching are at the intersection of Asian Studies, Critical Environmental Humanities, History and Religious Studies. She is the author of The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism (2005) and of more than fifty articles and book chapters on various aspects of Chinese and global history. Currently, she is researching for two new books on cosmotechnics and on different trajectories of human-environment relationships in Asia. As an art critic, she has written for publications including Frieze, Art in America, Parkett and Flash Art International. 

CRISTINA BALDACCI

Cristina Baldacci is Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she is also affiliated with THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE). At NICHE she coordinates the Ecological Art Practices research cluster, which questions the relationship between art and the environment intertwining ecocritical approaches, radical imagination, and creative sustainability.  

Baldacci’s research interests focus on the challenges of art history, art practices, and archives in the Anthropocene; the archive as a metaphor and art form; the strategies of appropriation, montage, and reenactment in contemporary art; the theory of images and visual culture – all topics on which she has published extensively. She has organized lectures, seminars, and conferences on the relationship between art, nature, and the environmental crisis.  

Baldacci is a member of the Venetian faculty board of the National Doctoral Degree in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, of which Ca’ Foscari is one of the partner universities. In 2021 she co-organized the Anthropocene Campus Venice 2021, a one-week forum, with a strong educational commitment, hosted by Ca’ Foscari in partnership with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The forum provided the theoretical basis for two publications of which she is co-editor and author: the book Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide (2022); and the forthcoming double issue of the “Holotipus” journal, titled Archiving the Anthropocene: New Taxonomies Between Art and Science (2023–2024).  

LAURA ONOFRI

Laura Onofri is a professional economist. She holds a master’s degree in economics from the Catholic University of Leuven, and a PhD in economics from Maastricht University. She conducts research, teaches, and works as a consultant in academia (Catholic University of Leuven, Maastricht University, the University of Bologna, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the University of Padova), as well as for various international organizations, including the World Bank, Conservation International, FAO, FAO Pakistan, UNEP, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDNK), the World Trade Organization, the Inter-American Development Bank, FEEM, Fondazione Enrico Mattei, and others.  

Her research interests, which have produced over one hundred scientific publications, focus on the study and evaluation of the relationship between economics and the environment, with special emphasis on modelling and microeconometrics, and the latter’s application to different areas, including fishing, aquaculture, agriculture (particularly viticultural markets), tourism, and culture. Her other areas of interest include evaluating ecosystem and biodiversity services, and applying, evaluating, and implementing the econometric operationalization of the theory of transaction costs developed by her external PhD thesis advisor, Oliver E. Williams (Nobel Prize in Economics, 2009).  

A member of FAO’s panel of experts on sustainable aquacultural economics, she is an Associate Partner of Metroeconomica. Onofri holds a degree in law and is a qualified lawyer (enrolled in the Ordine Corte d’appello di Bologna).   

speakers

	MARCO BENVEGNÙ Head of Corporate Brand Arper SpA
	DAVIDE DAMIANI Head of PR & Sales Promotion Repower Italia SpA
	FRANCESCO FERRARA Partner PwC Italia ESG Leader
	SILVIA MORETTO CEO D.B. Group SpA
	BERNARDO PETRONI Head of Compliance & General Counsel, AFC & Legal Dept. Dainese SpA