VIRIDITAS
A reflection on climate change
VIRIDITAS is a new digital section of Museum for Preventive Imagination, created to offer the public a tool to enrich its gaze towards the issue of climate change. The figures involved are professionals who operate in various realms, all inherent to climate and sustainability. Our interest is for our guests to address today’s most urgent and significant issues, related to climate change, from a new perspective and to give each one of them the chance to analyse the least redundant aspects.
The exploration of what is being lost due to this climate crisis and the intention to offer a more practical point of view, closer to everyday life, are key aspects for the development of this project.
The participants were asked to choose an image of something very dear to them that could disappear due to climate change and to write an accompanying text in which they express their thoughts in relation to the chosen object, as why it is subjected to the risk of disappearing and how its extinction will impact their lives as well as ours.
The image selected by one of our guests along with its description will be posted every two weeks on our website and Instagram page.
VIRIDITAS, which is the chosen name for this column, refers to a philosophical thought based on the link between human spirit and the vital energy of Earth. This line of thought was protracted by the Saint Hildegard of Bingen (12th century) an abbess, composer, theologian and herbalist. Viriditas is the source of energy on which all other forms of life depend. The term combines the Latin words that correspond both to green and truth. Hildegard sensed that people can only thrive along with the thriving of nature in whole. She understood that there is an inseparable link between the health of the planet and the physical and spiritual health of mankind which explains why the saint is increasingly considered a precursor of the modern ecological movement.
The book The Well Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith was the inspiration of the title.