The Fifth Landscape and UNESCO cultural landscapes: art as an enabler of resilience in local communities

The “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato” (UNESCO, 2014a) and the “Cultural Landscape of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces” (UNESCO, 2013) are both cultural landscapes (UNESCO, 1992), internationally renowned for their outstanding production landscapes. Following its inscription on the World Heritage List (2014), the Italian site is experiencing a growing demand for mitigation of the critical visual issues caused by built elements dating from the second half of the 20th century (ICOMOS, 2014), as well as for the enhancement of areas of natural and visual interest, through artistic initiatives that are not always calibrated in terms of the quality offered. The concept of Fifth Landscape (Repetto & Aimar, 2021) is part of this perspective, which aims to use art as a bearer of resilience in local communities through the activation of the imaginary, thus bringing added value to territories in experiential terms. Following the twinning between the 2 sites established in 2019, cultural performances such as the “The vineyard: a universal mist, an ocean of curdled milk” installation in Bologna (Repetto, 2019), the “FU” night-time illumination of Chinese rice terraces (Repetto, Florian & Lo Giudice, 2019) and the “Embrace of Light” between Azheke and Grinzane Cavour (Repetto, Chen & Aimar, 2020) go in this direction. Moreover, art can bring economic benefits to the populations living in these sites, correlating the export of agricultural products to the imaginary that international visitors can associate with these cultural landscapes.