God Is Green, the festival dedicated to sustainability and future created by Manifattura Tabacchi, reaches its fifth edition and it is held through the collaboration with DIDA – Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze and NAM – Not A Museum.

Having to face the climatic, social and political emergencies, humanity is in the midst of a process of changing the cultural and economic patterns accepted up to now.
When not driven by urgency, which reiterates the activity/inactivity dualism, we feel the need to make up the time for a critical and renewed observation about the universe. Given these premises, the exhibition Reverse Towards a New Paradigm develops along a narrative path that starts from the awareness of the status quo to reach an open vision: the reconstruction of a new balance between man and nature.

In order to achieve this awareness, Reverse Towards a New Paradigm gathers installations, videos and documentation works. The 17 authors involved in the exhibition employ the language of design to break it down and reconstruct it as an element of reflection, visualization and solution of the issue addressed.
The course is divided into five chapters: Breaking Boundaries, The Reciprocal Altruism, Decolonizing The Imaginary, Technology With Purpose and Re-enchanting The World.
In conclusion, the exhibition brings together insights experiences and data from around the planet with the idea that human language can be a resource no longer of destruction but of the creation and proposition of an alternative paradigm of coexistence, habitation and sociality.

BREAKING BOUNDARIES
Federica Fragapane / The stories behind a line
Studio Lievito / Presidio
Civic City / La poésie dans le tissu
Festival DiverCity / Altare della cura
Duccio Maria Gambi / Territorio

With the pandemic, if we still needed it, we realized that we cannot save ourselves by our own. It is about going beyond individualism by opening up to collaborations, between several people, step by step. Going beyond the individual means above all opening up to diversity and otherness, fostering knowledge, acceptance and inclusion. This means definitively overcoming the colonial logics which, albeit unconsciously, remain within us. And all of this, in the awareness that cultures have always exchanged, enriching themselves.

THE RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM
Duccio Maria Gambi, cc-tapis / Lapse 3
Eugenia Morpurgo / Syntropic Materials
Francesco Faccin / Honey Factory
Margherita Poli / Oggetti sinantropici

The overcoming of the environmental and social crisis means going beyond the human-centric way, in the name of a vision that reconsiders man an integral part of nature, in the name of an equal relationship between all living beings. With the non-human who can teach us more sustainable logics to evolve and thrive in harmony with the surrounding environment: energy efficiency, material savings, sobriety in behavior, new sociality, proximity.

DECOLONIZING THE IMAGINARY
Studio Orizzontale / co-carts
Andrea Branzi / Grandi Legni
Valeria Ferrari / Il custode dei sogni
Marginal Studio / Decolonizing Agriculture

It is necessary to propose a different, other project, based on a new cultural and social paradigm. There are several paths, not univocal, sometimes difficult. It is a question of overcoming the idea of possession, favoring the access to goods and services. We need to design beyond the centrality of the economy, in the name of a new sobriety. Another viable path is that of a powerful thingness, of magical, almost totemic presences in order to exorcize the idea of ephemeral products destined for rapid aging and disappearance.

TECHNOLOGY WITH PURPOSE
Thijs Biersteker / MB>CO2
Chiara Scarpitti, Enza Migliore e Francesco Dell’Aglio / Crafting Ecosystems
Fabio Ghelardini / Apotropaic Family
Vaia / Vaia Cube

In front of the excessive power of technology, it is evident the importance of making sense of it, today more than ever. Thus technological innovation becomes a tool and a means to tell the environmental impact of our actions. If technological innovation appears central in addressing the great challenges of the contemporary world, even looking at traditional knowledge can open up possible directions for research. More and more often technology merges with nature, in a contemporary hybrid of extraordinary charm.

RE-ENCHANTING THE WORLD
Anna Citelli e Raoul Bretzel / Capsula Mundi

Beyond everything, the real challenge appears to be that of a Re-enchantment of the World, which lies in the ability to look at reality with different eyes, in the name of a new depth of thought and action that, perhaps, goes well beyond a cold rationality and requires new rituals. And all of this, in the name of a deep bond with nature, an inheritance for those who will come after us.