Throwing the first stone
| Interventions

The intervention is carried out in a intensive farming area, with some portions occupied by illegal little structures typical of the outskirts as shacks and storage of building materials. A long time ago the area was characterized by wide marshlands.

For many years this area has also been integrated in the 'Site of Community Importance of the Florentine Plain’ n.45 - IT5140011 (Directive 43/92/EEC 'Habitat') and in the 'Special Protection Area’ for birds n.45 - IT5140011 (Directive 79/409/EEC ‘Birds’, amended in 2009, it became the 2009/147/EC). Recently, these two protection areas have been redifined as ‘Special Area of Conservation’ of the European Union. 

In spite of these international recognitions some plots of land are periodically artificially flooded for hunting. It’ is a situation which represents an affront to our public heritage This type of highly impacting activity has impoverished, over the years, the faunal community of this territory and turned it into a real 'ecological trap' for migratory birds that should be protected as stated by the aforementioned Directives.

 

In this scenery the artwork, consisting in a new wetland, a first free stopover zone for birds, intervenes

The Italian expression "throwing the first stone", as title of the work, points out what the artwork itself represents. It is a first act of civil rebellion against the state of absence of protection in which the remaining part of the territory is still poured.

The concentric circles represent waves which originate from a point where a stone is thrown in the middle of a flooded area. The work, that has a conceptual character, is the ‘transliteration’ in open field of the well- known vernacular idiom.

The intervention was projected to act as a driving force of a number of new interventions that leads to the effective protection of the area: the waves that proceed from the centre towards the sides show the direction of the progressive enlargement of the action in the territory. Since then, actually, many other interventions have been projected in this area, among them ‘Ecotones’ in Ponte a Tigliano (Prato).

 

Category

Work-site 

 

Author

Carlo Scoccianti

 

Area

La Bassa – Olmetti, Campi Bisenzio (Florence)

 

Ante operam state

Area characterized by a vast flat land encircled by banks (area used as flood-control storage).

 

Type of intervention

New wetland constructed by mechanical means over a previously existing area used as flood-control storage. Afterwards, the artwork was completed by planting riparian and aquatic species thanks to volunteer groups (Social-Art intervention). 

 

State of work progress

Completed (November 2012)

 

Main authorities/agencies involved

- Consorzio di Bonifica Ombrone Pistoiese – Bisenzio

- Comitato per le Oasi WWF dell'Area Fiorentina

 

Main bio-indicators (species or ‘groups’ of species) utilized to monitor the ecological functionality of the work-site:

- Waders: stopover during migration.

- Great Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus): nesting. 

- Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus): nesting.

- Little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus): nesting.