(and with Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen)
Immediately after the first lights of dawn, the cows come out of their stables, from the courtyards, climbing to graze in the meadows of the hills above the village, towards the woods. And when the sun sets, you can see them coming back, tired and satisfied, in the midst of the cars making slalom between their rocking bodies. Every day, from mid-May to mid-October, from sunrise to sunset.
This year there are 170 between cows and calves, and it is a great satisfaction for a village of about 780 inhabitants (they are almost 1/4 of the population!). Bradet is un increasingly depopulated village, where young people and working women find home between Massa and La Spezia (Italy), and the family-run economy has long left room for the large distribution of non-local products that fill the small shops in the area.
However, someone here still believes in a rural economy, as a way of living and being, producing milk and cheese (brânză de vaci, telemea, urda, …) for the markets in the cities of Brasov, Sfantu Gheorghe, Intorsura Buzaului, and for personal consumption.
You meet after 6:30 am at the beginning of the ascent to the hills.
At 7 am you leave.
The first lawns are just 400m away.
From 1 to 3 pm, rest in the woods, in the shade, near a source.
At 7:45 pm you go down with the cows to be at the meeting point in the village at 8:00 pm, and from there each cow goes in its own stable.
An experience of landscape, in a continuative slow motion, while the sun crosses the sky from side to side, the cows direct the path, in a walked geography.
a landscape lesson
an aesthetic lesson
At the Aesthetics course of prof. Luciano Nanni, at DAMS, University of Bologna (it were the years 1997-98), the relation with knowledge was explained with the emblematic figure of the cow, a ruminant. In the fields the cow eats grass, introjecting material from the world, data of reality. Once in the stable, the cow ruminate, in its three stomachs, reprocessing the gras before to excrete it as potential good fertilizer. Ruminating, it reworks, reprocesses, re-elaborates data of reality (as scientifically analyzing them..) But the cow can ruminate only if it has preventively eated grass from the world.
Aesthetics lesson with ciurda, is an integral part of Intersecţia residency programm. Each year the invited artist will be involved in a one day walking lesson with ciurda*, a landscape experience at cow rhythm.
Thanks to Valentin, Nicolae and Adi.
* ciurda is a herd of cows grazing in the hills from morning to evening.
