Among the Roman Pine: NEEDLES OF CHANGE
a situated practice of relational and ecological thinking
Among the Roman Pine explores social and environmental sustainability through learning from the Roman Pine during my exchange semester in Rome.
It investigates how attention and collaboration toward the Stone pine in Rome can open new ways of thinking about relationality, urban narratives, systems, and coexistence.
The project resulted in Needles of Change: These (un)folders invite viewers to engage, rethink, and wonder about the world from the tree’s perspective.
The open-ended, place-based exploration began with a fascination for the Stone pine within the context of Rome. In a city where narratives largely center on human histories and stories, this project shifts attention toward the tree as a living witness and relational presence within the urban landscape. Has it been listened to? What resemblances does it carry, what can we learn from it, and how might we form a more reciprocal relationship with ourselves and our surroundings?
Our generation increasingly experiences disconnection and rootlessness through fast-paced and digitalized ways of living. Through this project, the Stone pine became both guide and collaborator, offering alternative ways of thinking about attention, time, language, and place.
Through processes of observation, biking, journaling, listening, and intentional attentiveness, ecological, historical, social, cultural, and symbolic layers gradually emerged.
Themes of urban isolation, ecological interdependence, fragility, language, perception, and sacredness began to surface throughout the process. Rather than approaching these themes through linear documentation, collage became a way to translate emotional associations and relational encounters into visual form.
To narrate all these insights, the collages reflect an attempt to reimagine how we perceive and move through contemporary urban life. Each composition became a visual narrative through which new understandings and feelings can arise.
To further articulate these reflections into action, I developed a series of (un)folders that translated fragments of the process. Moving between the city, its inhabitants, and the Stone pine. Together, the work proposes a more reciprocal and relational approach to living with the natural world and challenges dominant ways of thinking.
To put the zines in action, I invited participants to sit beneath a pine tree and choose two zines that sparked their curiosity. The workshop demonstrated how the project’s strength did not lie in providing answers or instructions, but in creating space for observation, questioning, conversation, and personal interpretation.
Interestingly, every participant selected the Roots zine. Questions surrounding grounding, growth, and connection resonated differently with each individual, yet revealed a shared desire for belonging and attentiveness.
One participant described the experience by saying:
“Your project achieves to do just that, or rather, even it does more by, in the best way possible, doing less.”
Needles of Change is the result of an open-ended, place-based exploration that began with a fascination for the Stone pine within the context of Rome. The project resulted in eight relational zines that combine my personal autoethnographic process with new ways of thinking and relating that the pine revealed to me along the way. It invites young people to slow down and reflect on dominant narratives and systems in their daily lives.
