ZERO IMPACT DOES NOT EXIST
In an era of inevitable change, where no place remains external to human presence, Thermocene asks an unsettling question:
How do we transform collapsing chaos into a new collective form?
How do we listen in a world where silence is never free from human presence?
Across continents, visionary minds experiment with new ways of inhabiting the planet, reshaping daily gestures, work, food, movement, and community. Not as utopia, but as condition.
Meanwhile, two composers withdraw to 3,000 metres in the Alps. In the apparent silence of high altitude, they record hidden frequencies and traces of human activity. What appears remote is already permeated. From these signals emerges a contemporary symphony, not as demonstration but as experience: silence is saturated, there is no outside, no neutral ground: zero impact does not exist.
SYNOPSIS
In the icy isolation of the Alpine peaks between Italy and France, two composers engage in a singular collaboration: crafting a musical symphony from the invisible traces of humanity suspended in the air, short waves, satellite radio signals, electromagnetic fields, fine particulate matter, and residual valley noise.
Located in futuristic shelters, the Black Body Mountain Shelter and the Pinwheel Shelter, 30 kilometers apart at an altitude of 3,000 meters, they remain synchronized through an internet-based digital signal.
Meanwhile, in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Reykjav.k, Varanasi, Lagos, Kuwait City, Tokyo, N’Djamena, and London, a dozen visionary individuals from diverse fields, physics, philosophy, architecture, theology, activism, navigate their bustling lives.
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Among them are Werner Herzog, Elizabeth Kolbert, Saitō Kōhei, Richard Stallman, and others. Each visionary leads the viewer to
a symbolic site. These places are not mere settings. They are stratified spaces where ecological, cultural, and technological histories converge. They carry the imprint of what has been irreversibly altered, the residue of habits, infrastructures, and imaginaries that shaped the past, and the fragile outlines of what might emerge. In these locations, they listen before they speak. Rather than projecting a distant future, they inhabit the present as if a shift in human sensitivity had already taken place. A shift in which humanity no longer assumes itself as the center, but recognizes its embeddedness within a larger living and material system. Here, everyday gestures, walking, eating, dwelling, working, are not framed as adaptation to catastrophe, but as acts of reorientation. Memory is not invoked as nostalgia for a lost world, but as an awareness of irreversibility. Listening becomes a way of acknowledging that no space is empty of history, and no silence free from trace. A comprehensive system of human ways of inhabiting the planet.
Human activity unfolds within this transformed habitat – no action isolated from its ecological and material context. The visionaries do not theorize from a distance; they situate themselves within this condition, allowing their practices to emerge from it. The visionaries do not present solutions; they expose tensions. Their practices emerge from environments already marked by extraction, acceleration, and loss.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
A zero-impact action does not exist. Man is present even in those places where he is not visible, and a nature transformed by humans will inevitably shape our understanding of freedom in a new era that we are still struggling to inhabit. After three years of research and encounters with people working at the forefront of climate thought and activism, I felt the urgency not to explain what is happening, but to create a space where it can be experienced. This documentary seeks to enter beneath the skin of the audience, not through information, but through perception.
Climate change is often narrated in ways that fail to alter perception. Despite being a shared planetary condition, it rarely disrupts the rhythms of everyday life. For the first time in history, humanity faces a danger that is not localized but systemic. Yet it remains abstract, distant, and difficult to feel.
I do not assume that a film can alter the default setting of people’s behavior. Nor do I believe it can directly transform consumption habits. What it can do is shift perception. Understanding such conditions through embodied experience may open space for a deeper awareness of how we inhabit the world.
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In this project, I chose to situate myself within the experiment: ascending to 3,000 meters and becoming part of the same exposed condition explored in the film. My background as a composer became a tool not to interpret the world from above, but to listen from within a physically and mentally demanding environment. It is a way of testing perception, questioning comfort, and turning vulnerability into a shared position rather than a personal gesture.
Cities are natural environments shaped by human presence. The air itself is a shared space inhabited by invisible infrastructures.
I am not interested in demonstrating empirically that human impact is irreversible; this is already evident. What interests me is experiencing what it means to inhabit a world where no action is external to its consequences. Through the visionaries involved in this project, individuals who observe the world from extreme and situated perspectives, the film explores how perception shifts when humanity no longer assumes itself as the center. Rather than building a new collective image, it traces how different sensibilities emerge within the same planetary condition.
In 2015, Richard Stallman provocatively coined the term Thermocene to shift attention away from a purely human-centered narrative and toward an awareness of thermodynamic impact and global overheating. More than a term, Thermocene can be understood as a lens, a way of perceiving how energy, temperature, and consequence shape not only ecological systems, but also the structures of thought and imagination.
CREDITS
Subject, screenplay, direction, cinematography
Giorgio Ferrero
Music and sound
Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore
Architecture and set design
EX.
Exhibition curation
Beatrice Zanelli and Camilla Zennaro
A production by
KINO Produzioni and MYBOSSWAS
In collaboration with
ARTECO, EX.
Supported by
Europa Creativa Media
Fondazione Compagnia di SanPaolo
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Technical sponsors
Epson, Montarbo, Nanlite, Patona, Rycote, Tip Top audio, Gruppo TFS
INSTALLATION
Executive producers
Marco Quartana (MYBOSSWAS), Andrea Cassi (EX.), Beatrice Zanelli (ARTECO), Giovanni Pompili (KINO PRODUZIONI)
Exhibition design
Ex.
Andrea Cassi, Michele Versaci, Serena Giardina, Martina bunino, Gianluca Zimbardi (GZMNZ), Francesca Cassi
Photographs
Giorgio Ferrero
Creative Consultans
Piero Fragola (modular system), Marco Marasciuolo (radio research), Andrea Brasolin (diffusion system), Nadir Naji (studio assistant MYBOSSWAS)
Scientific consultant
Gerardo Capobianco (INAF)
Programming
Rajan Craveri
Graphic design
Arianna Grasso
Nicolò Brondolo
Set design
Attitudine forma
Press office
Nora comunicazione
Educational activities project
Arteco
Surveillance
Look up
VIDEO INSTALLATION
Subject and direction by
Giorgio Ferrero
Written by
Giorgio Ferrero
in collaboration with
Andrea Cassi, Rodolfo Mongitore, Michele Versaci
Music and sound design
Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore
Direction of photography
Giorgio Ferrero, Niccolò Arcostanzo
Operators
Enrico Aleotti, Niccolò Arcostanzo
Production Management
Cristina Sangiorgio (MYBOSSWAS), Lara Costa Calzado (KINO PRODUZIONI), Andrea Cassi (EX.)
Assistant Director
Duccio Brunetti (MYBOSSWAS)
Set design and Art Direction
EX.
Film production
Giovanni Pompili, Lara Costa Calzado, Isabella Weber, Valentina Pompili, Massimiliano Navarra, Martina Anselmeti, Francesco Bonerba, Valerio Libertini, Eleonora Pacini, Giorgia Sciabbica, Gaia Longobardi, Greta Nordio, Luca Gallo
Editing
MYBOSSWAS
Duccio Brunetti, Carlo Cagnasso, Davide Santilli
Special effects and editing
Carlo Cagnasso (MYBOSSWAS)
Color correction and editing
Davide Santilli (MYBOSSWAS)
Live sound engineer and sound editing
Nadir Naji (MYBOSSWAS)
Visual advisor
Alec Von Bargen
Production assistant
Matteo Moretti (MYBOSSWAS)
Support Alpinists
Francesca Cassi, Maria Luisa Joannas, Claudio Natta, Riccardo Natta, Franscesco Perron, Eugenio Piazzi, Massimiliano Salino
Mules
Ketty, Dea
Master Muleteers
Luciano Ellena (ETIC.A SOC. COOPERATIVA SOCIALE), Benedetta Mattiauda
Graphic design
Arianna Grasso
Nicolò Brondolo
Backstage
Massimiliano Salino
VIDEO INSTALLATION
Sound Art
Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore
Production
MYBOSSWAS
Studio assistant
Nadir Naji
Audio consultancy
Andrea Brasolin
Programming
Rajan Craveri
Thanks to
Paolo, Paola Corradini and family for the support and use of the Bivacco Matteo Corradini.
Ilaria Perron Cabus, Francesco Bogetti, the families Berrone, Perron Cabus and the group
ABC for the support and
use of the Bivacco Stefano Berrone.
Comuni di Oulx and Comune Cesana Torinese.
Paolo Manera, Alec Von Bargen, Francesco Giai Via.
Eleonora Monge (Infini.to Planetario di Torino).
Gallerie d’Italia Torino, Antonio Carloni, Simona Cantone, Antonella D’Amico, Federica Bianchi, Giulia Borroni, Marta Cirinei, Alessandro Andrea Ferro, Luca Lanni, Alessia Pagano, Antonella Pellegrino, Davide Rossini, Luca Saporiti, Silvia Stabile.
Mercato Centrale Torino, Giulia Bellana, Andrea Balestrino, Samuele Benedetto, Pierpaolo Mantuano, Rocco Palma,
Federico Savini, Simone Terribile.
Emiliano Alborghetti e Sae Institute, Monica Bua e Epson,
Fabio Babetto e Francesco Pecini e Nanlite, Gruppo TFS,
Patona, Letizia Buti e Montarbo, Iaria Gaspari e Rycote, Piero Fragola e Tip Top, Pino La Rosa e Dada Service.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2025 MYBOSS SRL, KINO PRODUZIONI, ARTECO, EX.
SUPPORTED BY
PRESENTED AT
TECHNICAL SPONSOR
