Farewell to Known Skies

In recent years, there has been considerable discussion about climate change. It is discussed in newspapers, appears on politicians' agendas (perhaps still too little), features in protests, and arises in informal conversations, often framed as an emergency, as we search for ways to remedy the potential disaster for which we are responsible. Indeed, since the 19th century, the climate variation we are witnessing is no longer solely the manifestation of a natural climate cycle; it is primarily anthropogenic in origin. This now indisputable phenomenon, which we have all experienced first-hand, has finally overcome all possible scepticism. While it is increasingly common to hear climate described in general terms as a threat or an alarm, when we ourselves intimately experience the consequences of climate change, it takes on other definitions and characteristics, assuming metaphorical forms rooted in context, memory, and emotion.

Gaia Fugazza addresses all of this in Farewell to Known Skies. How many memories, often stemming from our childhood, originate from a spatiotemporal experience linked to the climate? The heat and cold we felt, the rain that soaked us, the snow that trapped us, the scent of flowers, shrubs, and storms. We seek them out with the arrival of each new season, every anniversary, every visit to familiar places, in those landscapes to which we feel we belong. Ultimately, climate and its memories are part of the fabric weavof the story of an environment shared with a community of which we feel – perhaps – like members, even years later and after lives have taken different directions. It was once called the "first tribe": not the one we chose, but the one into which we were born. Situated in a space we inhabited, its landscape remains anchored to our bodies and our sensory memories.

Gaia Fugazza, who has been living in London for over a decade, has collected a series of testimonies with the aim of building an archive of memories, emotions, and physical sensations linked to Italian climates that have disappeared. Noticing firsthand the stark transformation of the weather conditions she experienced during her childhood in her regions of origin, and feeling a sense of disorientation in the face of the evident shift between what was and what is today, she began interviewing Italians who have lived abroad for many years. She asked them about formative memories from their past, linked to climates no longer existing.

In Farewell to Known Skies, the discussion on climate change deviates from its quantitative core into an engaging narrative. The individual experiences collected and edited by the artist into short monologue – preserving the original words and expressions used by the interviewees – are transformed into sung or recited scores, reactivating a process of collective memory that makes the audience complicit. Gaia Fugazza is convinced that emotional involvement is not merely a way to draw attention to the subject, but a fundamental lever to inspire action and change.

The micro-stories of Farewell to Known Skies, performed live by the artist together with singer Isabelle Woodhouse, remind us that the personal is political in terms of narrating environmental disruption. Individual memories become a universal human chorus, leading us to “feel” the urgency of taking a stand.

Text by Ilaria Gianni

Performance by Gaia Fugazza
In collaboration with singer Isabelle Woodhouse
Costumes by Diana Castaldi
Commissioned by FOROF, in the archaeological site of Basilica Ulpia, Rome in 2024