“Cambio” (from the medieval Latin cambium, ‘change, exchange’) is an ongoing investigation conducted by Formafantasma, first presented at Serpentine Galleries in London in 2020, into the extraction, production, and distribution of wood products.
The industry’s tentacular supply chain has grown out of the nineteenth century’s colonial bioprospecting to engulf the entire biosphere. Cambio is an attempt to expand our understanding of what design can be beyond the finished object and its disciplinary boundaries: forestry techniques and timber legislation then become tools for designing a better future for our forests; scientific knowledge goes hand-in-hand with environmental activism in fighting illegal logging, and the equilibrium of trans-national geopolitics is redefined in the struggle between conservation and consumption.
The three videos on show are extracted from this multidisciplinary exhibition that aims to question the role that design can play in translating emerging environmental awareness into informed, collaborative responses.
All videos and research materials are available at: www.cambio.website
