Since September 2021, Opera Mundi has been offering, at the invitation of the Frac Picardie Hauts-de-France, a series of multidisciplinary meetings around the notions of "landscapes of life". These times of meetings, debates and original conferences are developed in the company of thinkers, researchers and artists, who invite us to put in perspective the environmental change and its effects, both local and global.
The landscape of life is a response to the biological opportunism of living beings in search of places of life. Where to settle? It is all the more complex as the diversity of the living that compose it is varied. A desert can be considered as a landscape of life because there are still inhabitants in desert area but its reading is simplified. This is a limited ecosystem. Conversely, a tropical forest presents itself as a living landscape with multiple exchanges, sometimes difficult to decipher as they seem intertwined and abundant. The landscapes of the non-vivant are those that have been transformed into the support of industries and monocultures by the exploitation of territories. They constitute the poorest open spaces in life for reasons of profitability concerning a single product, a single animal or plant species. A city can be considered as a landscape that excludes non-human living but it can also be considered as a place of welcome to a diversity hunted from everywhere else using all the interstices offered by urban planning.
Gilles Clément is an internationally renowned landscape gardener. He is professor emeritus at the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage in Versailles (ENSP).
He designed and created many public gardens such as the Parc André Citroën and the Jardin du Quai Branly in Paris, the Jardins du Roi in Blois, the Jardins de Valloires in the Somme, the Parc Henri Matisse in Lille, and the Jardin des Méditerranées in the Domaine du Rayol.
At the end of the conference we invite you to join us at Île aux Fagots. We will discuss ecological and environmental issues. Around a drink offered, this time is that of a friendly and sonorized discussion with the speaker.