Igenuity is seeing possibility where everyone else sees none. – Enrico Mattei
—
Ever since 2011, Dolomiti Contemporanee has been working for the regeneration of territories, through experimental reactivation of big, abandoned or underutilised sites inside the dolomites, both in the Belluno province and in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, in which important cultural and functional “construction sites” have been launched, ones which have kindled the national debate on regeneration and re-use.

These sites constitute a resource for the territory, and it is necessary to think of a correct way to use them relative to today’s needs, especially in today’s historical period, in which the concepts of sustainability, and regeneration, soil consumption reduction, seem to be very current.

But are these concepts actually current? Do political agendas take resource management and territory development practices into consideration?

At the moment, much is being said about the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

What what are, the olympics, actually? They aren’t a mere sports event, but an opportunity.
The olympics can be a great inspiration for growth of large areas, and for the entire country.
Let’s consider the former ENI Village of Corte, in Borca di Cadore, which is, to this day, a symbol of a time during which our country ran as it should, and was a real innovator; a work of art, of architecture and of environmental sensibility; the mass is substantial, it could host thousands of people.

Now, we must ask: would it not be appropriate to carry out an in-depth and accurate evaluation of this unique site and of the potential which it can actually offer in these circumstances?

This operation of re-usage, which is certainly a possible one, would be an ideal ground for the application of sustainability criteria.

It seems obvious that the former Eni Village should be considered as an option in the scope of the post-olympics; it would be able to house a series of activities useful for both the valley and for the whole province, linked to various social services types, big events, and much more. A great, diverse centre which we could call a “school of landscape”.

Will we be able, as a whole, to elaborate a shared strategy, and to tackle this undertaking, which isn’t about a town, but rather about a whole territory? Dolomiti Contemporanee reiterates the opportunity to take part in this kind of reflection, actually invites everyone to think about it, and is committed to continue the action of awareness, and to concretely move the tools of the culture-engine.

Gianluca d’Incà Levis

Pictured, the dig site of Zeus’ Temple in the Greek city of Olympia where, 3.500 years ago, the Games were born. (E. Curtius 1875)

The Italia Ski Jump has been the greatest symbol of Cortina D’Ampezzo ever since the 1956 Olympics.
It feels opportune to reflect on the repurposing potential that this structure holds, placed in a such a strategicallu logistical in relation with the access to Cortina.
The ski jump is the natural torchbearer of Cortina 2021 and Milan-Cortina 2026.
It could already have been working for quite some time, as both a beacon and a territory landmark, but most of all it could have become something active and useful for its territory.

DC‘s interest for the Italia ski jump is thus part of a broader cultural policy, which is presented as a praxis itself and a kind of “geography of regeneration” which allows for the temporary or permanent re-activation of the sites inside which we work, by inserting them into a network. For this reason, we have been thinking of a possible repurposing of the structure belonging to the ski jump, as well as the bleachers.
Another sign of interest consists in a graduation theses (2019) based on an idea by two young architects, Gabriele Bee and Mattia Menardi (master’s degree from the IUAV university of Venice – dacc department of architecture, construction, conservation).
The university’s interest, and the collaboration with dc, will lead to the development of a meaningful and sustainable proposal for the repurposing of the ski jump by, thus, analysing its potential, that is to say the value of the structure, its strategic position in relation to the road system, the functions which it will be able to embody during the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics through contemporary art and, naturally, the functions which it will be able to carry out in the wake of large sporting events.

On Friday, May 25th, the 16th edition of the Architecture Biennale of Venice, titled “Freespace”, was inaugurated. Federica Galloni (Contemporary and Suburban Art General Director and Superintendent of the Italian Pavillion), Paolo Baratta (President of the Biennale of Venezia), Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati (Senate President), and Mario Cucinella (Designated Curator) were all in attendance.

The project for the Italian Pavillion, curated by the Architect Mario Cucinella, is called Arcipelago Italia (Eng.: Italian Archipelago), and finds its home at the Tese delle Vergini at the Arsenale.
The exhibit will remain open until November 25th 2018.

Through Arcipelago Italia, Cucinella has carried out an explorative journey, a reconnaissance of Italy‘s inner areas, placing particular focus on a series of sites and projects, as well as architecture and cultural socialization procedures that involve the territory’s participation, and that are always equipped with a vision in regards to the determination of the future of the Human Landscapes, one that presents itself through good practices, actions based on networking strategies, open regenerative process-oriented approaches, and re-innovative ideas which may prove themselves to be capable of responsibly tackling the theme of enhancement and reclaiming of the environmental, landscape-related, cultural and social Heritage.
The sites aren’t enough in and of themselves, and there is no future for the Heritage if the people don’t operate towards that goal: The future is the product of present actions.

The call for the Italian Pavillion was answered by more than 500 projecs, 67 of which have eventually been selected by the Curator, and find now a home at the tese.

Among them is Dolomiti Contemporanee, inside the Itinerary dedicated to the Eastern Alps.
A great image of Vajont’s Mt. Toc (by Isabella Sassi Farìas), sighted from the Nuovo Spazio di Casso, welcomes visitors at the entrance of the Pavillion.
A significant amount of space on the digital devices inside the exhibit is set aside for Progettoborca, the practice of regeneration for the former Eni Village of Corte di Cadore, that DC kickstarted in 2014 together with Minoter in collaboration with the Borca di Cadore Municipality and together with its own many local, national and international partners which are by now more than 500, and that constitute a large, active network, and the real support system of the project.

DC‘s practice is, moveover, highlighted in a Docufilm, titled “The other Space. A journey in Italy’s inner areas” produced by SOMEONE Srl Milan, directed by Marcello Pastonesi and Carlo Furgeri Gilbert, that will become part of Rai Cultura‘s programming.
In the movie, the Curator Cucinella discovers the extraordinary former Eni Village of Borca, its value and its residual potential, and discusses it at lenght with Gianluca D’Incà Levis, creator of Dolomiti Contemporanee.

—

Arcipelago Italia is the theme of the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale of Architecture 2018. It is an idea that shifts architecture’s attention away from the major cities and over to the physical space of our country where, even in the most distant past, communities have historically expressed themselves in a different relationship between urban dimension and territory. These territories are spatially and temporally distant from the large urban areas, but they possess a priceless cultural heritage, with unique features that differentiate Italy from the European urban structure, making it possible to identify it as an “urban space in the Mediterranean,” as Fernand Braudel described it. The heterogeneous cultural identity of these territories, reflected in the diversification of their landscape, together with a vast territorial width and their distance from essential services, has encouraged us to consider their revival as a strategic theme for Italy as a whole.

Arcipelago Italia. Projects for the future of the Country’s inner territories is the title of the project by curator Mario Cucinella for the Italian Pavillion of the 16th International Architecture Exhibit of Venice (May 26th – November 25th 2018) promoted by Contemporary Art and Architecture and suburbs General Direction, MiBACT

Prometheus- Open Food Lab is a project whose aim is to generate, recover and redistribute knowledge relating to food.
The eventulal goal is to support resilience in remote areas, starting from the secluded spaces of our mind.
Food isn’t just nourishment, a mere survival too. What interests us is, first and foremost, its function of social catalyst and cultural “supplement”. It is able to change the perpective with which we look at the world, it is capable of flipping over the frameworks of meaning that relegate places to remoteness. Remoteness as a mental state. We will explore these locations of the mind and culture as if they were another planet entirely. We’re transdimentional explorers in this space that is both virginal and yet already violated in the most intimate meaning of the word. We look for intelligent life forms that may be able to generate intelligent forms of life.
Intermittent memories of ancient civilizations tell us that there was life here, before ski resorts and tourism of intermittent people with no memory at all. The space was emptied by the heap of clichés which drags itself along the plains below its own tedious bulk, then crumbles and flattens like an avalanche. It presents itself naked, and ready to be filled, once more, in this vacation. There, where rock, lighter, soars towards the sky.
The question is, rather: are we ourselves ready or could be still be, when the only sensible thing to do will be to give a meaning, once more, to these remote places, which are actually close to us, because they are only remote in our mind? Will we still have ourselves meaning at that point, or will we be able to only rely on our senses? Too late, then, to be explorers?
Explorers, revolutionaries and spirits of times long gone refuse the plains and sense the weight of those places where gravity loses its intensity without making the steps of people wishing to climb on them lighter.
We will make these locations our base of operations, a launch pad of future, and plenty in number, explorations, thanks to Dolomiti Contemporanee, which has agreed to lend us the structures of Progettoborca to undertake our training.

Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun, January 2018

–

Expedition #1, February 3rd – 6th 2018

The first team of explorers includes:

Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun, creator of the project.

Angelica Stimpfl, presswoman and engraver with great cognizance of food. She tells stories that seem to come from a different time, and cooks fatty dishes of the Trentino Region tradition, with a little something added to them.
She builds tree houses and plans to repopulate her birth village in the Non Valley.

Giulia Fassina
Brilliant photographer and videomaker. Friend and travel companion, I could not think of a better person to document this endeavour. Not least of all because she probably would have held a grudge if I hadn’t asked her. Very picky and wary in the dietary field: it will be a lot of fun to have her taste whatever we’re going to concoct.

Matteo Ghigino
Young chef from Sardinia (more specifically Carloforte) with a great talent. He has taught me the majority of what I know, and most of all to eat leaves. Colleague and companion in adventures tethering on the edge of food poisoning. He has a blog about wild and forgotten foods. We work together on the AmiDO project, which gathers chef and producers of local delicacies..

Fuocopaesaggio has been the concept for the 2017 edition of Dolomiti Contemporanee, which this year, too, has produced sparks and flames all around, between Borca, Casso, and Monte Ricco.
Progettoborca, the first site of this spread-out fire, hosted, between April and September, hundreds between artists, architects, and cultural innovation designers, giving new light to the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), flaring it up.

The Open-studio on October 20th, 21st and 22nd is a long celebration, during which we plan to present the work carried out during the summer, a lot of artistic and cultural production, ideas and objects, projects and work-in-progress processes: ideas are concrete objects here, products of the spirit: stoneworks lapped by fire.

[icoloridelfuoco 480/1400°C]

Characteristics of the motion

Colour of fire: three days of meetings and exchanges, in the Colonia-hub-lab, with many of the artists that have, in the past few months, taken part in the kindling of the regenerative practice launched inside the Village and the Colonia ever since 2014 by Dolomiti Contemporanee, with Minoter‘s support.

The artists return to present the pieces they developed in the part few months, pieces that are part of the whole, and a whole that is a responsible practice that re-thinks the usage and destiny of the Colonia, today and in contemporaneity.
And the other artists are coming too: many of those who have nourished the project since the very beginning: the pioneers, the second-comers, the veterans, and the students of the Fine Arts Academies, and the architects, and the scientists of the forest, and so on.
All these sensitive, active and capable people together, working on the reprocessing of the space (the meaning) of the sleeping giant (and of the peaks and the woods that go along with it), to never do, here, the cenotaph of Gellner, Mattei, and something that isn not anymore.

Because, on the contrary, ithat thing – the residual, extraordinary potential of the Colonia and of the Village, which had been waiting for a long time to be risen again; a rise that is accomplished through a stubborn regenerative practice, that is the nourishment of relationships; a rise that cannot naturally coincide with mere theory from head-in-the-clouds economists, nor with a pathetic restoration without any ideas about the future usage, and set above it – that thing, we were saying, is still there, most definitely, and it’s a process, which thinks and re-thinks, and figures out and transforms, and pushes and widens.

During these three days, thus, as it is usual in this great, exceptional stirring accelerator (which is not a blender) of ideative, productive, building, experimental, re-innovative experiences, we will meet and observe many things, all of us present and active, a population of woken and attentive people, never just facsimiles, where guests never become a so-called audience, but instead morph into additional sensibilities as they are put into relation in open networks, and so forth.

Programme

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20TH

Cinema of the Colonia
(all day)

Radioborcia, Fire Session Sessione del Fuoco
(all day)

Thaumàzein – The threshold
by Sandra Hauser, Higher Cabin.
(2 PM – 10 PM)

Rìcèrcati
(8:30 PM – 10 PM)

–

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21ST

Cinema of the Colonia
(all day)

Radioborcia, Fire Session Sessione del Fuoco
(all day)

Thaumàzein – The threshold
by Sandra Hauser, Higher Cabin.
(2 PM – 10 PM)

Risulta di dislivello
by Stefano Comensoli and Nicolò Colciago.
(2:30 PM – 4:30 PM)

EPL – Experimental Photography Lab

Fiorio sounds
Auditorium
(7 PM – 9 PM)

Rìcèrcati
by Andreas Zampella
(8:30 PM – 10 PM)

–

SUNDAY OCTOBER 22ND

Laundry Print Lab
with Giuseppe Vigolo and Fine Arts Academy of Venice students, Marcello Cualbu and Anna Poletti
info and booking enquiries: info@progettoborca.net.
(10 AM – 6 PM)

Cinema of the Colonia
(all day)

Radioborcia, Fire Session Sessione del Fuoco
(all day)

Thaumàzein – The threshold
by Sandra Hauser, Higher Cabin.
(2 PM – 10 PM)

Lunch/Studiovisit at Cametti’s place
by Simone Cametti and his family, invite only.
(12 AM – 2 PM)

Guided Tour of the Colonia
(2 PM – 4 PM)

INTHEMOUNTAINS
by Giogio Orbi, Lower Cabin.
(2 PM – 4:30 PM)

Artist round table in the Auditorium
With: Marta Allegri, Elisa Bertaglia, olmo g. stuppia, Stefano Moras, Stefania Mazzola, Sandra Hauser, Marco Andrighetto, Gino Blanc, Simone Cametti, Stefano Comensoli, Nicolò Colciago, Andreas Zampella, Marco Rossetti, Bruno Amplatz, Stefano Cagol, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Luca Chiesura, Andrra Visentini.
(4:30 PM – 6:30 PM)

Franz Rosati and Marco Cinque
video and sound performance at the Cinema.
(5:30 PM – 7 PM)

Rìcèrcati
by Andreas Zampella
(8:30 PM – 10 PM)

—

Click here to get directions to reach the Village. The access points for the Colonia, where the activities take place, are the offices of Progettoborca, former Eni VIllage, Via Mattei 5, Borca di Cadore.
From the offices, DC’s staff will lead the guests to the different locations of the events inside the structure.
We ask that guests try and adhere to the times indicated in the programme: because of the site’s size, it is not possible to reach the various locations without a guide.

Visitors, while accompained by members of Progettoborca‘s staff, will be able to walk through the main spaces of the enormous Colonia, built on a project by Edoardo Gellner, understand the site’s project of regeneration, and discover the artworks realized inside the Colonia itself by the artists currently availing themselves of the Residency program.

Starting from July the 13^th, the public will be able to access the site every Thursday afternoon, in the months of July and August. The visits will begin at 3 PM sharp, starting from the Progettoborca offices (at the former reception of the Colonia, on Via Mattei 5: please follow the road signs inside the Village to find it. Here you may find additional directions), and they have a duration of about 90 minutes.
Booking in advance is not required (with the exception of large groups).
The tour is free of charge, but a small donation is encuraged.

The Colonia will also be open to the public in conjunction with the periodic open-studio during which new artworks are presented.
The open-studio dates will be listed both on the home-page and on the showcase section of this website each time a new one is set.

Every Thursday, between 10 AM and 6 PM, it will furthermore be possible to indipendently visit the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

We’d like to also remind that, between May and September, the Boite Hotel and the Corte Residence, both located inside the Village, and just like it designed by Edoardo Gellner, are open for business.

It is possible to sign up for the Progettoborca newsletter to be regularly updated on its activities.
Just send your request at: info@progettoborca.net.

We will meet those interested in taking part in the guided visit at the offices of Dolomiti Contemporanee, in Via Mattei 5, Corte di Cadore Village, at 3 PM sharp.
Find more detailed directions to find the location here.

The visit will last about two hours, and will allow those taking part in it to discover the artworks realized inside the Colonia by the artists involved in the artist’s residency programme by Dolomiti Conteamporanee.
The Progettoborca Archive will also be presented to the public in this occasion.

That same day, the Our Lady of the Cadore Church will be open for visits from 10 AM to 6 PM, indipendently from the tour itself.

Pictured blow (photo credit: Giacomo De Donà), the cups decorated with the six-legged dog, ENI‘s historic logo.
The cups were produced in the 60s by Richard Ginori, one of the numerous and important companies that contributed in the transformation of the Corte di Cadore experience into a one-of-a-kind, great and innovative active hub of production and modernization.

Programme of the day:
Speech and guided tour by Gianluca D’Incà Levis | saturday June 10th
3:30 PM | Casa Giorgione Museum, Castelfranco Veneto
5:30 PM | Brion Tomb, San Vito di Altivole

–

It’s very beautiful in the summer; the swallows fly by…This is the only work of mine I’m always happy to go see, because I feel like I have conquered the meaning of the countryside, just like the Brions wanted. Everyone goes there with plenty of fondness; the children play, the dogs run about: all cemeteries should be like this [...]
Carlo Scarpa, “A Thousand Cypresses” – lectio magistralis, Madrid 1978.

The San Vito di Altivole Mausuleum, one of the most well-known works by architect Carlo Scarpa, offers itself to the visitor as a modern “grief-processing machine”, a fundamental mechanism of which is the relationship with the local countryside, whose “meaning” the Venetian architect felt like he’d managed to capture.

The landscape represents a fundamental point of confrontation for Scarpa, whose design experiences place him in the same ballpark of the Veneto Reinassance artists – Bellini, Giorgione, Tiziano – who entrusted the landscape with a new and modern role.
We’d like to remind the reader about the important collaboration between Scarpa and Edoardo Gellner that realized itself inside the former Eni VIllage of Corte di Cadore (BL) in the Our Lady of the Cadore Church, another astounding experience of landscape design through architecture.

The Castelfranco altarpiece by Giorgione, found inside the funeral chapel of Matteo Costanzo, is among the works that best show this innovative landscape direction that Carlo Scarpa took to heart and developed inside the Brion Tomb.

Here the full programme of the events.

We have no interest for so-called inaugurations (the monument-moment is directly opposed to the spinning of the vector-moment: that is what interests us, as well as its twisting): we do care about a space that is projected forward, twisted on itself but also utterly straight while it faces, without towering over them, the other masses of meaning, the other propelling spaces, hooking them to it: in that, we are still invested, and we invest in it (believing and thinking is doing, if you know how to climb – the space).

Here, now, we gather thus the first pictures from the opening, and the day’s video.
While we’re all here, putting together the pieces of DC’s 2017 season, which takes (fiery) shape in the relationship between thoughts and (corresponding) actions, between accessed spaces scattered around the landscape that we want to see being built, and between us and the others, those who come here bringing themselves, active and ready, and between us and the local authorities, which aren’t things, but sparks.
We thank all of the people who have assisted our team, who helped managing the effort: DC’s staff (Alice, Giovanna, Elena, Anna, Romina, Paolo, and Giacomo), and then Elsa and Aurora, Ivan and Nadia, Nicola, Marta and the students of the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, and the many artists taking part in the weekend survey between Borca, Montericco in Pieve and Casso. And thus, the sites touch one another: here is the Landscape.

Photos: Giacomo De Donà

Photos:
1/6 Peak
7/12 INTHEMOUNTAINS
8/… Opening April 1st 2017

On Saturday, April 1st 2017, Dolomiti Contemporanee proposes an Open-studio at the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) of the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore.
During the course of the afternoon, two works in particular will be showcased: Peak, by Nicolò Degiorgis, and INTHEMOUNTAINS, by Giorgio Orbi.

The collaboration between Museion and DC icludes the presentation of the Peak artist in Borca.
The magazine will be installed onto a structure inside the woods around the Colonia.

The pictures of the peaks follow one another, brought together two by two – from the absolute blackness of the night views to the blinding brightness of the snowy summits – recounting the principle of  cyclicality that governs the lives of the mountains.

INTHEMOUNTAINS is a project with a wide scope, which gathers many of Giogio Orbi‘s experiences in regards to alpinism, and brings them to Borca.

It’s a series of operations that take part in the Dolomites of the Cadore area, and inside the neighbouring territories through different mediums, and which give shape to an organic kind of reflection.

INTHEMOUNTAINS ponders over the role of the artist and of the evolutionary dialogue that they intend to prompt with the mountain and its landscape. An essential role to depict and welcome the transformations and mutations of the contemporary mountain.

Mountains look so beautiful that once you start looking at them you can’t stop. A glance lasts only a moment but it takes part of the whole metamorphosis.

The title of the project comes from a section of the poem The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, written in 1922.

a 11-hour projection set
no humans allowed
troubles with cold?

A project by Mattia Pajè
A production by Progettoborca / Dolomiti Contemporanee

—

Movie youtube sci-fi/horror selection by Gianluca D’Incà Levis:

- The Snow Creature, W. Lee Wilder, 1954

- The Brain Eaters, Bruno Vesota, 1958

- Battle Beyond the Sun, 1959, T. Colchart (a.p. F. F. Coppola)

- Battle of the Worlds, Claude Rains, 1961

- The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Joseph Green, 1964

- The Day Of The Triffids, Steve Sekely, 1963

- The Earth Dies Screaming, Terence Fisher , 1964

- Space: 1999, Another Time, Another Place, David Tomblin, 1974

- Erinnerungen an die Zukunft, Gli Extraterrestri Torneranno, Harald Reinl, 1979

- Frogs, George McCowan, 1972

—

Thanks to Nathan H. Juran, The Brain from Planet Arous, 1957

On Saturday, December 10th, Ineffabilis Gellner&Pb, the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) of the former Eni Village of Corte di Cadore will be open to the public for the first late autumn open-studio of Progettoborca.
The tour will last about two hours, and will allow for visitors to explore the incredible architecture devised by Edoardo Gellner, discovering the artwork created by the artists in Borca.
We’d like to remind that, in the Village, an International artist Residency program has been active for three years (here you can find the artists’ names and artworks. Here a video from a previous Open-studio).

During the visit to the Colonia, the Progettoborca Archive, realized in collaboration with Archim, will be officially presented.
Moreover, the first results of the Progettocoperta (Blanketproject) will be displayed.

The tour will begin at 14, at the Dolomiti Contemporanee Office/Bookshop, inside the Village.

From 10 AM to 6 PM it will be possible to visit the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

How to get there >>

Foto: Brando Prizzon

From 10.30 AM to 1.30 PM
From 2.30 PM to 7.30 PM

The line is a reference point that shifts
Vincenzo Agnetti

The visible is not an image, it doesn’t function like an image. It’s not what’s in front of us, but what’s all around us, what comes before and after us. (1)

Cose Cosmiche, in collaboration with Dolomiti Contemporanee / Progettoborca, is pleased to invite you to A Walking Conference: an unconventional journey through the former Eni Village in Borca di Cadore.
The act of walking, indeed, allows us to see dynamic lines, song lines that trace the nativee landscape, lines of flight that pierce the landscape’s screen in its most traditional representation, witch’s lines, as Deleuze would say, that drag the thought itself behind the movement of objects [...].(2)
We’ll make our way through former Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), designed in the 50s by the architect Edoardo Gellner, via the both dispersive and immersive aptitude of the walk. As our thoughts fall in line with our footsteps, we’ll hear from astrophysicists, researchers, and artists as they share their reflections and the details of their latest projects.

Day schedule:

A Walking Conference will take place between 10:30 AM and 7:30 PM.
Thus, during the day, those taking part in the conference will follow the speakers and artists, who will alternate one another in performative and narrative actions, as well as in the presentation of scientific and philosophical themes.
Those who wish to participate must bring their own packed lunch, which will be eaten inside the Colonia‘s park between 1:30 and 2:30 PM.

Speeches/Perfomances:

The gravitational waves’ journey through the universe, Marica Branchesi – astrophysicist, researcher at the University of Urbino, and associated with the INFN of Florence

Building the future of gravitational waves detectors, Jan Harms – Physicist, Marie-Curie researcher at the Urbino University and at associated with the INFN of Florence

The problem of knowledge in Nietzsche and Heisenberg,  Maurizio Guerri – philosopher, researcher at the National Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in Italy (Insmli) and teacher at the Fine Arts Academy of Brera

Noli me tangere, Sophie Ko Chkheidze – Artist

The dark side of the universe seen by Euclid, Luca Valenziano – astrophysicist at the INAF/IASF institute of Space Astophysics of Bologna

The crisis of criticism today in the swamp of image itself, Maria Giovanna Mancini – Art critic and professor at the Fine Arts Academy of Urbino

23.07.16 | 12:30 | Borca di cadore, Fabrizio Perghem – artist

Circiling Around the Message, Carlo Prelz – I.T. expert and professor both inside and outside the the University of Berna’s department of Sports Science

From the earth to the moon, Pamela Breda – artist

Desire of mine, Enzo Umbaca – Artist

The walk is subject to limited enrolment and a booking must be made to take part in it (the number is limited to 50 participants): please rwrite an e-mail to info@progettoborca.net

A Walking Conference @ Progettoborca is curated by Cose Cosmiche and realized in collaboration with Dolomiti Contemporanee. We’d like to thank the Arthur Cravan Foundation for its support.
Cose Cosmiche is a platform-catalyst of artists, scientists and researchers coming from various fields of expertise willing to reflect and confront with each other on the themes of time, energy and matter. It is curated by Helga Franza and Silvia Hell.

Arthur Cravan Foundation is inspired by the dada performer A. Cravan ed hs the aim of supporting, producing and promoting artistic  ideas and projects thought to be “impossible to realize” and “With No Future”.

—

1) Jean-Christophe Bailly, Le parti pris des animaux (Eng.: the animals’ bias)

2) Gilles A. Tiberghein in the preface of Walkscapes by Francesco Careri

Here you can find some photos of the event.

Photos: Nicola Noro

 
On Saturday July the 9th, 2016, then, starting from 8 PM, the new Open-Studio by Progettoborca will take place. The public will thus be able to visit some of the main structures of the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore where, for the past two years, DC has been leading a platform of regeneration of the extrordinary compound, built in the tail end of the 50s and based on a project by Edoardo Gellner, thanks to Enrico Mattei’s vision. The Village is at the centre of an experimental program of identity redefinition and unification – Progettoborca – which is developed by DC in collaboration with Minoter, the business that currently owns the site.

On Saturday, July the 9th, starting from 3 PM, it will be possible to explore the huge Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) first, then the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore. During the visit to the Colonia, some artworks realized through the Artist Residency program active in the village will be presented; their underlying theme will be “Patches and Gardens“. Some teachers and students from the Fine Arts Academy of Venice are involved in this artistic endeavour.

At 6:30 PM, at the Bear’s Cage, one of the most astonishing structures of the compound, the musical performance “Playing in the Cage” by the New Landscapes Trio, which is composed by Silvia Rinaldi (Baroque recorder), Luca Chiavinato (Baroque lute and oud), Francesco Ganassin (bass clarinet), will take place.

Here the playlist:

improvvisazione, Hijaz Car Kurd
Le Vojage, L. Chiavinato
Rumors, F. Ganassin
Lachrimae, J. Dowland
THE DREAM, J. Cage
Halab, L. Chiavinato
Gnossienne, E. Satie
Walqissat Min Alnnahl, L. Chiavinato
Parfum De Gitane, A. Brahem
Izmir, F. Ganassin

 
Photos: Nicola Noro, Catia Schievano

We’d like to sincerely thank the Borca di Cadore Municipality, already a Progettoborca partner, which is actively contributing to the realization of the event.

Photo: Giacomo De Donà

In conjunction with the Cadore’s Culture Week, Saturday, May the 14th 2016 Progettoborca hosts a new Open-Studio.

The tour will allow for the access inside the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), overall the largest structure of the Village (30.000 square meters), abandoned for about 25 years, and now pivot of a recovery program launched by Dolomiti Contemporanee and Minoter in 2014. The public will thus be able to discover this frozen architectural giant, which today houses a lively artistic and artistic hub, and whose future purposes are being envisioned.

Thanks to the visit, it will thus be possible to retrace the unique backgound of this site, wanted by Enrico Mattei and realized by Edoardo Gellner, so important in the history of cultural and business innovation in Italy. And it will also be possible to dwell on the pieces realized by the artists currently taking part in the Residency program active inside the Village, discovering the active labs in the compound.

The Open-Studio will be held from 3 to 5 PM.

After the tours, visitors will be able to reach the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore (Edoardo Gellner/Carlo Scarpa).

Participation is free of charge.

—

The Cadore’s Culture Week is taking place between the 7th and 15th of May, and is promoted by the Magnifica Comunità di Cadore together with the Cadore’s Dolomites’ Museum Network, in collaboration with the Veneto Region, the Tiziano and Cadore Study Centre Foundation, the GAL Altobellunese, the Belluno Province, the Philological Society of the Friuli and the Archaeological Group of the Cadore.

Photogallery

Photos: Brando Prizzon

An open studio by progettoborca. Photo by Giacomo De Donà

On Thursday, March the 24th the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) of the former Eni Village of Corte di Cadore will be open to the public, with an open studio by Progettoborca.
During the visit, which is going to last about two hours in lenght, it will be possible to explore this fantastic architectural creation by Edoardo Gellner, discovering the pieces realized by the artists in Borca.
Indeed, we’d like to remind that the Village has been, for over one year, the setting of an international artistic Residency program (here the artists involved, and their artworks).
Starting from 4 PM, it will be possible to visit the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

We’ll met at 2 PM at the Offices/Bookshop of Dolomti Contemporanee, inside the Village.
How to get there >>

Again, the starting point is set at the Offices/Bookshop of Dolomiti Contemporanee, inside the Village,
How to get there >>

An Open-Studio by Progettoborca. Photo: Giacomo De Donà

At 4 PM, on Friday the 30th, at the Auditorium, Progettoborca, the platform of enhancement and functional redefinition of the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, and in particular of its, to this day, non-utilized parts (like the Colonia, or summer camp building), active since 2014, will be presented.
Many will intervene in the event, among which the curator of Dolomiti Contemporanee, a representative of Minoter, the society that currently owns the site, some IUAV teachers (architecture and visual arts), some teachers, artists and students from the Fine Arts Academy of Venice and the Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa, two Venetian partners already at work on DC and Progettoborca‘s active sites.

Today, in the Village of Borca, an international residency is currently active, hosting dozens of artists from all over Europe.
In this extraordinary site, built from the 50s onwards thanks to the innovative due Enrico Mattei-Edoardo Gellner, all the activities, artistic, cultural and linked to different spheres and themes relative to the regenerative practices (rebranding strategies, functional redefinition, economy of culture, involvement of innovative businesses and the local governance, networks of support implementation) are today integrated, searching for an asset that may concretely favour the redefining and the reusing of this precious and only partially appraised resource.
Here and here and here and here some videos outlining the project.
Here an online Press Review.

Progettoborca is supported by IUAV.
Here all the partners of DC.

Following, the schedule of the speeches that will take place from 4 to 5 PM.
Speakers:

- Gianluca D’Incà Levis, curator of Dolomiti Contemporanee and Progettoborca
- Roberto Bosi, director of Provoiaggiarchitettura
- Marcello Cualbu, Minoter-Cualbu Group
- Martina Carraro, curatr of  E. Gellner Archive
- Angela Vettese, director of the undergraduate course of visual arts and fashion, IUAV University of Venice
- Alberto Cecchetto, teacher at the IUAV University of Venice
- Riccardo Caldura, teacher at the Fine Arts Academy of Venice
- Marta Allegri, artist and teacher at the Fine Arts Academy of Venice

We’d like to remind that  Progettoborca is in the final of the national Contest for innovative culture “CheFare3″. Those interested in supporting the regenerative project for the extraordinary Village of Borca, can do so by clicking on this link and following the instructions.

External shot of one of the plastic bodies of the Colonia‘s ramps, half-buried by the Village’s hypertrophic forest. Photo: Sergio Casagrande

Atoms hitting one another, the fissionable material, here, is miscellanous: there are therman neutrons, high cross section (#progettoborca) which trigger kinetic velocities (ti moves in space), and then the moderators (although this is a quick reactor, not an obtuse machine: the explosion is built, nuclear fuel and bonding energies take some atoms from here as well: Gellner‘s atoms, Mattei‘s, the ones of Italy‘s history.
Energies that are brought along, energies that are taken: centrifuge of meetings, and careful measure of all the parts: that is what “regenerative project” means.
PROJECT here is a synonym of ACTION, not of meditation – consider the expression “tasting wine”, and people tightening their taste buds and contemplating closed forms; come on).
Soon, the pictures of this inner sky (stars were whirling in the reverberating siderals).

While this morning (Sunday November the 25th the Colonia remained open to the public), again teachers and students of Milan’s Polytechnic roaming the Colonia.

And Carlo and Brando and Jacopo fighting at the patronal festival of Borca, asking the inhabitants to vote for us in the chefare contest (and you can do that here), until November the 5th.
C’mon Papo, we’ll eat the poacher up with honey fungi (it won’t be fillet, just something to toughen the teeth).

In this photogallery, some shots from the overnight tour of the 24th, and the diurnal one of the 25th.

Photos: Gianluca Camillini, Giacomo De Donà, Marcella Giulia Pace, Brando Prizzon.

We’d like to remind that Dolomiti Contemporanee (DC) alreadt took part in the CheFare contest, obtaining the ninth place among almost 700 other prospective projects.

This year, too, a project by DC was selected for CheFare, gaining a spot in the group of 40 finalists (over some 600 applicants). The project running right now is Progettoborca, the regenerative platform that was activated about a year ago (August 2014) inside the incredible former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, thanks to the collaboration with the Minoter Group, which currently owns the site.

The final prize of CheFare is of 150.000 euro, which go towards rewarding 2015′s three most innovative cultural projects in Italy. The 40 selected projects can be voted online by the public from September the 9th to November the 5th 2015. The ten most voted projects will then be evaluated by a jury that will select the three winning projects by December the 13th, 2015. The winners will recive a prize of 150.00 euros each. Four projects from the Veneto region are currently in the list, Progettoborca is number 32 in the CheFare platform.

Click here to vote for Progettoborca in the CheFare3 contest >>

To give your vote for the project you simply need to click on “vote” and register your email address. After that, CheFare will send you a confirmation link for your vote at the email address you provided. Only after you’ll click on that link will your vote be confirmed.
The vote is free of charge and can be given in a couple of minutes.

All the initiatives relating to the candidacy of Progettoborca in the CheFare3 Contest are gathered through the dedicated Facebook page, VotaProgettoborca. From now to November the 5th, when the online voting phase of the contest will cease, Dolomiti Contemporanee will organize public events dedicated to the candidacy of Progettoborca in CheFare3; news of them will soon be provided.

download the flier

On Saturday, then, at 2 PM, the first ones in (so to speak: we never do get out of here; the real first ones), at the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), were the people of Landscape Stories, photographic workshop with Domingo Milella.
At 3 PM, the titanic asset’s maw (as it is a breathing being, not a lifeless object) have snapped open, swallowing down everyone. More than 2.300 people have passed through the Colonia; how about that.
And the Colonia has changed, and keeps on changing, every day, every moment.
The Colonia is the now the cornerstone of the vibratile Village, and Progettoborca is the heart of the upheaval process (and of Terraformazione) launched a year ago. The meaning of the process is contained between two opposed spanning extremes: a diabolical 3D postcard with two snarling groundhogs, that look like furry burgers, and the contempt for every kind of subsidence (going up).
In the Colonia there are no frames, artworks, exhibits: we don’t like them much, these dry, little, wooden words; better a lash to the oculomotor and the channelization of fluids, finally unbound.
There are, thus, demonstrations, presence, sharp glances, here, epiphanies and proedures (this is the word), even before paths and tales (procedures don’t need to script themselves in an explicit plots: procedures are simply ideas in the words, and ideas in the works are very far from being factual states and from the other areas of leveling down).
Often, in fact, even depending on who is looking, something that happens is that a potential ends up scarring over, necrotizes, gets paralized into a static image, a picture, let’s say, i.e. the passive representation of a crystallized state: but here, we’re saying, we’re inside a motion, and in exactly that resides the chatacteristic of processing: process is motion (and real motions are, however, faculties typical of those who know how to stay, and don’t keep themselves amused with vacuous and pretentions declarations of mobility – the nomadic genius of the get-going, as that prosaic, cannibalistic, rude turist of exoticisms of Chatwin, the moleskine to the office worker, the short sleeves of the intelleco-peacock, the prose of the caveman).

Going back to things, though, before people get distracted (what people, for that matter? Don’t we always say that the only real things are ideas? And then? But we can’t always be completely real, isn’t that so? Of course we can: we must): we’ve all gone in, and there were this things-ideas, alight, a must-see.

The installation by Domenico Antonio Mancini, first, in the large hall of the AS Pavilion, from which we can access the spatial body of the trembling Colonia.
Nineteen Mivar television sets*, unused for years, modified and reactivated, Mattei‘s face at the centre of all of them, talking with no voice, waiting the second phase of this installative work, a performative one, at the Bear’s Cage, and there its title will eventually be understood: La Versione di Misha (Eng.: Misha’s Version). And, here, Antonio, our electrical enlightener (Idrotermolux), was the one to bring the light.

At Domenico’s side, Urban Hero, one of Fabiano De Martin Topranin‘s statues, not alone in the hall anymore.
On the ground, facing the pillar (while the pillar-trees of the posthumous jungle of the Antelao stand outside), a gellner-pasolinian protosculpure (a trace) by Aleksander Velišček.
Then, the human snake began to move, up the first ramp, to reach the area for the clothes distribution, where Silvia Hell has performed, in the Female Showers, the installation Cleanland, strong and thin, sharp and yet secret in its corners, at least some of them: perceptibility isn’t objectivity, but the function of a kind of explorative hunger, instead, without which only matches on TV remain (seek the lights, the shadows, the dust, and stop looking for a tagline; we’re alone in the world, and we must build the gear). And here, too, the light was brought by Antonio, our omnipresent electrical enlightener.

Next to Cleanland, in the Male Showers, is on the other hand the first fragment of the Slovenia Pavilion (Vanja Mervič, Luka Širok, Aleksander Velišček, Špela Volčic; with the patronage of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture), which is coming along, well deployed, atomically scatteredd. It’s the installation Volume Moles by Luka Širok. Chromatic fluids with different densities have been found in the nooks and crannies of the Colonia. Waters, juices, oily substances, fats, 20-yesr-old drinks. A series of glasses and glass containers have emerged from the monster’s belly, too, which every day gives back objects and relics, like storm at the beach. The liquids in the containers, in stratified colours, inside the showers, in the soap holders. An effervescent table (or what’s left of it: that, too, is from back in the day) is picked up with latex gloves, and immersed into the liquid. And the fuilds, the masses and densities, move, mix together, a slow boil, reminding us of Martian settings (Robinson Crusoe on Mars, seen yesterday), and extra-galactic volcanic exploits (in the sci-fi movies from the two-year period between ’57 and ’58, in which we wallow every night).
Then, at the infirmary, before the chromatic curtains by Stefano Moras, for whom no scrap is ever waste, and always formal-nurishing principle, here comes the re-assembled floor by Aran and Bruno, two of the students of the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, whom Marta Allegri has brought to Borcia, with the Repair, take care workshop, and the wardrobe halved by Nicola‘s blade, which now towers, whole, on the composit raft of recovered wood (very Michael Johansson, we’ll show him), between an icon and a buck, thanks for the gift, guys, Christopher is doing great, too, and says thank you along with us.
In the next room, Mattia Pajé prepared his auto-terraforming cycle – A – n- T, 72 straight hours inside the Colonia, night and day, to hear the sounds, to feel and perceive everything that is part of that still, great body, when nobody is around.
Then back at the laundrette, where Andrea Visentini, from whom some sonofafemaledog has stolen six beautiful watercolour pieces (we’ve talked about that already), not at all defeated, has devised two new sculptures, which is now completing,  and a little further down, still in the laundrette, the original dryer, thanks to Sofia, has become a printing press, and the pizza trays from back in the day have become the first engraved plates, and there it is, then, the experimental printing and engraving lab of Borcia, and we’ll make good use of it, too.

Going back up to the dining hall, then, we find the research plant by Giorgio Barrera, Barbara De Ponti, Filippo Manzini, and their artist book-prototype: soon they will be here again, developing. The chairs aren’t there anymore, in their place, behind the glass; where then? In the Auditorium, well terraformed, dear people, and it was about time.
In the phenomenal Auditorium, in fact, many  and different things have happened.
Talkonfession, the great piece by Michelangelo Penso, has stolen the scene for a day. The four wooden confessionals, originals by Gellner, the eighty original chairs by Fantoni, the thirty recorden interviews, intellectuals’ coices mixed to those of the people of Borca, recounting a polyphonic idea of the Confession, other than the (confessed) history of the relationship of the community of Borca and this Village, of alinen-likenesses and in-comprehension.

Moreover: blessed be Antonio, by now our essential electrical enlightener: the Auditorium had been dark since ’91, when the Colonia was declared unfit for use. But on Saturday, the light came back and spread once again in the air of this sharp upturned keel, warming the wood and concrete to the ceiling, and projecting out the gigantic glass wall De-stijl, to water the forest, shining in the wet and dark night.
(this text must be continued: we might use it as a exhibit-file. This sentence isn’t a forgotten draft note)

Translator’s notes:
*Made in Italy televisions sets. The last of its factories closed down in 2014.

Photo: Paolo Dal Pont, Giacomo De Donà, Stefano Moras, Adriano Zanni

The guided tour will begin at 3 PM, in the offices of Progettoborca (here the directions you’ll need to get there), and will continue until about 6 PM.
From 6 PM, sounds from the Bear’s Cage.
From 4 PM to 7 PM, it will be possible for people to visit the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

-Artists (new works): 
Luca Chiesura, Silvia Hell, The Joys Experience, Michelangelo Penso, Luka Širok, G. Olmo Stuppia.

-Workshops and labs currently being carried out, and in-progress projects: Slovenian Pavilion: Vanja Mervič, Luka Širok, Aleksander Velišček, Špela Volčic (with the patronage of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture); “Repair and Taking Care” Workshop, curated by Marta Allegri (with the patronage of the Fine Arts Academy of Venice, and featuring the students Bruno Amplatz, Rob van der Berg, Sofia Bonato, Cristina Calderoni, Ilaria Fasoli, Annamaria Maccapani, Miriam Montani, Aran Ndimurwanko, Giulia Sacchetto, Giovanni Sartori, and the professor Riccardo Caldura); “Artisti Atelier Giudecca” project, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Enej Gala, Francesco Nordio, Miriam Secco, Matteo Stocco, Annalisa Zegna); Giorgio Barrera, Giuseppe Caccavale, Simone Cametti, Barbara De Ponti, Giovanni Gaggia, Domenico Antonio Mancini, Filippo Manzini, Roberto Paci Dalò, Kai-Uwe Shulte-Bunert.

-Artists (permanent artworks, and those currently being re-processed): Marta Allegri, Marco Andrighetto, Chiara Bergamo, Elisa Bertaglia, Gino Blanc, Stefano Cagol, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Gianni De Val, Sandra Hauser, Min Ji Kim, Stefano Moras, Luka Širok, Andrea Visentini.

  Day’s program:

  3 PM: reception in the new offices of Progettoborca: start of the Colonia visit and Open Studio.

  6 PM: sounds from the Bear’s Cage, happy hour.

  From 4 PM to 7 PM: Chance to visit the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

The tremors continue, in Borca. It’s not landslides, or seisms, or bradyseisms at all. Simply, as we’ve always said, this frightening Village, with its inexhausted Colonia (penal colony for artists, a camp of poietic deportation), continues to grow its performative index, with its aboundance, these past few weeks, of artists, entrepreneurs and managers, people of culture and those who are, somewhat, awake; all of them seeing, thinking, imagining, making plans. All of them, yes, and another virtuoso: the pathetic watercolours thief, whom we are hunting down, and soon intend to publicly skin alive, so to speak.

The TERRAFORMAZIONE-TERRAFORMING of Dolomiti Contemporanee 2015, which extends to progettoborca, is the new way, the only one possible, that we’ve been walking for five years, in spite of the usual cases of inertia. Take the site, and play it like a cordophone, plucking at its steel strings, allowing its soundboard to resonate (a soundboard, this one, as big as 30.000 square metres), a spatial board that, in truth, had never stopped making sounds, one that is a tremor, which is transmitted to all who walk inside the cave (to all, that is, except for the cultural eunuchs), that never dies, and that only needs to be called back to immediately increase again (it was already there, waiting).

So, then, on Thursday, August the 20th, a new tremor will shake Borca, where everything surprises because nothing was ever imagined (by Mattei and Gellner) and built “as experience teaches”, and every thing and part of it was, and remains, shock and rejection (rejection of praxis, and ideas, and of known shapes that satisfy the lethargic ones, the un-awakened, and in their deep sleep they explore no space, not even the oneiric one, which isn’t still, at all), and behind every corner and ramp there’s SWERVE, expected by this point, in its unexpectedness, like, let’s say (and I say that condifently), every page by Kafka, inventor of the (speculative)GEOLOGICAL-DYNAMIC narrative form  more determined than ever (everything is still, and everything is vibrating, no detail is superfluous, no tall story that can be downed like a sickening physiological tonic used to induce literary burps, but rather mobile tar, that makes the landscape authentic, digging up its basic stereometry of meaning: like in Bernhard: like in Gellner: speaking of, all of this has a function of cleanliness and igene: the formal rigour – always poetic, from a scientific standpoint – exterminates the cannibal vulgarity of every entertainment-based plot; there are no novelists; there is a TEXT, which is nothing but, again, SPACE).

And thus, moving on from that aside, on Thursday, August the 20th, 2015, the new tremor will be made by Pier Luigi Sacco and Roberto Paci Dalò. A culture economist playing electronic music – a terraforming sequence – together with a visual artist and musician? An encounter of records and machones where the bpm of minimal techno of the best tradition, meets blasts of instrumentsl sounds and modular synths. And where Sacco and Paci Dalò dialogue in a continuum in which genres and sounds mix up creating something unheard of, specifically (and exceptionally) for #progettoborca

AN ECONOMIST OF CULTURE PLAYING TECHNO MUSIC IN THE BEAR’S CAGE, IN TERRAFORMING SEQUENCES, TOGETHER WITH A MUSICAL ARTIST? But how do they mean CULTURE, then, these men right here, muses the Minister’s aunt, as she mends a grey sock, using an encyclopaedia’s volume as iron rest? But the Minister’s aunt understood what we wrote above, on the eternally new continuous making of things and their meaning, through the weapons and the deliberate attacks on norms and customs, perpetrated to their detriment by those few NORMAL and resistent humans who stubbornly continue to keep always putting anything, every force, into play and into a network, without making notes to other’s pieces, but WRITINGK AGAIN AND ALWAYSK THE SPACE? No way, the Minister’s aunt does not understand. And it’s not like we, in the bear’s cage, are inviting her. We invite others, though, to see and hear. That the (cultural) economy of the landscapes is made (played), simply, by the waking men and women who often have fringes and rubble in their heads (let’s call it an inter-cranial tuft, made of encephalic liana), and use their wits to pierce their skulls, letting the secretion out.

(should it rain, the event will take place anyway, the set will be moved inside the Colonia).

It is possible to sign up to the newsletter of progettoborca to always be up to date on the activities being carried out inside the former Eni Village. Please send your contact info at info@progettoborca.net.

Medardo I, the dc2015 rocket, as it was being set up in the village, last winter. The rocket, designed by aerospace engineer extraordinaire fabio balcon, landed on the new moon of borcia: the terraforming operation has begun – original photo: sergio casagrande

On Saturday, July the 11th, the DC2015 rocket was launched, the cultural Terraforming process started; a new phase, the fifth stage. The official Press Conferenc was held, at 2 PM, on the ground floor of the AS Pavilion of the Colonia, presenting the schedule and planned projects for 2015, several of which are already in progress. Milky way, naturally.
The house organ of Progettoborca was presented: “La Testata” (Eng.: the header), entropically diffused periodical paper of mental climbing and cultural gardening of the vertical landscapes. In the first number, several pieces on the artistical and cultural activities, on the history and memory of the Borcia Space Station (Corte Village), on the perspectives of regeneration and on the Residency program. The paper can be found at the Progettoborca bookshop, in the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) of the Village, and in the table football-less bars of the Val del Boite.
The Communication Campaign for Terraformazione was presented by the famous, charismatic, sometimes seemingly shady (just affectionate teasing, of course) Fabio Balcon, who curated it. The pictures of the campaign, will be projected, launched, spread, put into orbit on the media in the next few weeks and months, to introduce the different expeditions in the Space Sites in which we’re going to operate.
On the tail end of this post you’ll find, summed up, a few of the projects we’re tilling, after planting the seeds (here, you sow first and till the soil later).
Then, after the children of the Village’s Campsite (where many of our own have slept, prayed, cried, contemplated, even, in afflatus, and banged their heads against the wood), lead by Father Valentino and Raffaella, and steered by Alice, spent some time in the Colonia, their noses up in the air, our guests did the same in the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.
And then, again, everyone down to the Colonia, alive once again, and pulsating; a green heart with a lynphatic system, concrete, metal veins and arteries, six-legged glass to contain the objects of attention, the care and ideas of the artists-disrupters, disrupters of shortage (of ideas) and inertia, who cross over each other every minute, now, in the Colonia.
And thus, on to the new combover of the Bear’s Cage, another magical cell of radiant enchantment for an astral dj-set, and the inverted happy hour of DC (which starts from Acqua Dolonia, to extinguish the hydration processes, that mustn’t be carried out to the detriment of alcoholic euphoria, and continues with Grappa Nonino, to abruptly raise the bio-psycho-attentive threshold and, this way, to reach Birra Dolomiti already well kickstarted; and the prosecco, in different shapes and forms, always nice. A carpet of grass, and woods, and jungle, of stimuli and landscape, of architectures with an alien aesthetic, in this atomic cosmos among peaks, whose nakes nucleus each person experiences in jumps (excepts the idiots: but we don’t invite any of them), here was exposed, and it reverbetated, the carpet of sound; you’re all carpeters, then: come and shake them.

Below, some pictures from the event (photos by Giacomo De Donà)

[nggallery id=325]

Dolomiti Contemporanee, 2015 season (Terraformazione) – Synthetic Press Release

On Saturday, July the 11th, the fifth season of Dolomiti Contemporanee (DC), whose title is TERRAFORMAZIONE, was officially launched. The official Press Release, open to the public, took place in the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, an important “constuction site” of DC, with its platform, Progettoborca, ever since last year.

Day’s schedule

2 PM: reception at the new offices of Progettoborca, realised thanks to the support of Minoter. The offices occupy the former reception building of the Colonia, another one of Gellner’s creations (Via Mattei 5). They house an area of public reception and info-point on the Village, and a bookshop put together with the collaboration of the Tarantola Bookshop of Belluno (texts on Gellner, Scarpa and on the architecture of the mountain, on art and design, on mountaineering and landscape), as well as the offices of Dolomiti Contemporanee. The building is also the new way into the Colonia.

2:30 PM: everyone moved to the welcoming hall of Colonia (ground floor, Pavilion AS). Here the Press Conference took place.
The projects and programs of the summer-fall season of DC were presented, all relating to the sites of Borca and Casso (Nuovo Spazio di Casso), to the International Artistic Contest Two calls for Vajont, to the new sites (former Paper Factory of Vas, Forni di Sopra, and to the new collaborations that have been activated.
The Communication Campaign of TERRAFORMAZIONE, realised by Fabio Balcon, of Bra_Ba_M, was also presented. The paper of Progettoborca, “La Testata”, was shown.
Some of the not-yet-shown artworks relised in the past few weeks by the artists taking part in the Residency program in Borca were presented.

3:30/5:30 PM: Visit to the Colonia and open-studio, presenting new pieces, both realised and in the works, by the artists involved in the Residency program (Min-Ji Kim, Marta Allegri, Gianni De Val, Filippo Manzini, Giorgio Barrera, Barbara De Ponti, Andrea Visentini).

5:30 PM: Visit to the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore

6:30 PM: Happy Hour-buffet at the Bear’s Cage (Colonia)

4:00 PM/8:00 PM: music at the Bear’s Cage. LV-426 terraforming plant (alien sounds from the cage-space) djs: Kool de Sac, Brizia Fa, Rebecca Wilson, Mantaraffu.

Dolomiti Contemporanee 2015 – Terraformazione: sites, projects, programs, activities.

Former Eni Village of Corte di Cadore

The main operative centre for Dolomiti Contemporanee in 2015 is the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, where is active, ever since July 2014, the platform of functional and cultural regeneration Progettoborca. The extraordinary site of Borca, and in particular the humongous Colonia, are, by now, a large “construction site”/lab, in which dozens of artists, coming from all over Italy, and from several countries abroad, work, meet, live.
Indeed, an international Residency program is active in the Village, housed in the structures offered by the Minoter-Cualbu group, current owner of the site. The artists wotk, through they pieces, on the recovery of the potential, both historical and cultural, of the site. Many and varied the cultural and artistic projects that are going to be developed between July and November, some of them listed below.

A new paper for Progettoborca. La Testata.
The first issue of the Paper “La Testata”, dedicated to the cultural project of enhancement and regeneration of Progettoborca, to the activities being carried out within it, to the history and architecture of the site. The Paper was designed and redacted by Dolomiti Contemporanee, with a graphic project by Fabio Balcon of Bra_BA_M.

July the 9th-september 2015
Inventario/Vuoto/Moltitudine – research Lab in the Former ENI Village. The artists Filippo Manzini, Giorgio Barrera, Barbara De Pontiare activating their own research lab on the Colonia from July. The experience was born from the will to begin a dialogue on this location; thus individual needs were born, which found out to share procedural affinity. The result of the first revelation is summed up and made tangible with the realisation of a prototype in which different impressions and manners of operation are fused together, and heard. In the month of September, through an ulterior Residency program, this path, that could have different artistic solutions, able to activate even more processes, will found its actualisation.

July the 11th, Min Ji Kim, We or They, smoke, luglio 2015,site-specific installation , Colonia.
We or They: not a disjunctive duality, but an interrogation. The presentation of the smoke-colour in the Colonia puts into relation the structure of the geometric shapes-volumes of Gellner’s architecture and the ephemeral organic volume that, before scattering inside it, redefines space, in that dialectical relation. Full and empty. Heavy and light. Mobile and still. Present and alien. What is alien? What was, and still is? Or what is to come?

July-September: Marta Allegri, Disabitate, and workshop “REPAIR, Take care”, with the students of the Fine Arts Academy of Venice.
Marta Allegri has begun to work in Borca on the tail end of summer 2014. Her work is a continuous process, realised in different phases in time, through which the artist maintains, recovers, repairs, cares for the former nuns’ quarters, one of the many abadoned spaces inside the Colonia, giving them new life, even living inside them, fixing the domestic environments (living room, kitchen, bedrooms), repairing systems, plasters, masonry, and adding then her own artistic intervention, which inglobate parts and remnants of objects trouvé.

From August the 31st to September the 6th, her work will be shared with a group of students from the Fine Arts Academy of Venice (Bruno Amplatz, Rob van der Berg, Sofia Bonato, Cristina Calderoni, Ilaria Fasoli, Annamaria Maccapani, Miriam Montani, Aran Ndimurwanko, Giulia Sacchetto, Giovanni Sartori), who will work on the theme “REPAIR, Take care”. During the workshop, professor Riccardo Caldura will be present for a lesson of phenomenology of contemporary arts.

August the 11th-18th, Slovenia Pavilion
With the Slovenia Pavilion the format of the national artistic collaboration in Borca is inaugurated. The artists Vanja Mervič, Luka Širok, Aleksander Velišček, Špela Volčic,will work in the Colonia, which will house the first artistic lab of national participation for a week. The artists will work in group, interacting with one of the abadoned spaces of the compound, on a pictorial-installative projects focused on the themes of the border, the transition, and the alternate history. The work will not be completed: it will be taken up again in the following months, with new things being added to it as it goes on: the lab is a process activator: the artwork mustn’t be closed, the space must be open instead.

August 24th-30th, High-lab
The artists of the Giudecca (VE) based Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation atelier (Francesco Nordio, Enej Gala, Miriam Secco, Fabio Roncato, Matteo Stocco, Annalisa Zegna) will live for a week in one of the fantastic structures of the former Eni Village: the permanent tents Camping ground, 1.600 mt.s in altitude, in the heart of the woods at the foot of Mt. Antelao. They, too, will select a space inside the Colonia, and will regenerate it, using various materials found in-site for their artwork.

Other artists of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation. Another groups of artists taking part in the Residency program of the Foundation in Palazzo Carminati (Valentina Furlan, Caterina Morigi, Davide Sgambaro, Sebastiano Sofia, Valerio Veneruso), will be in Borca to kickstart other “construction sites”-projects in August and September.

Before, and along.
We’d like to name some of the artists that, in the past months, have already begun and presented the procedures of artistic terraforming (works that re-utilise parts and objects of the original structures of the Village): Marco Andrighetto, Chiara Bergamo, Elisa Bertaglia, Gino Blanc, Stefano Cagol, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Gianni De Val, Sandra Hauser, Stefano Moras, Luka Sirok. Artisti in esplorazione, lavori in corso: Giuseppe Caccavale, Luca Chiesura, Silvia Hell, Masbedo, Roberto Paci Dalò, Michelangelo Penso, Kai-Uwe Shulte-Bunert, Andrea Visentini.

September, spacial interactivity lab, curated by Marcello Cualbu.
In September, Marcello Cualbu will lead a lab of spacial interactivity which will involve the students of the Art Institute of Cortina D’Ampezzo and of some other schools of the Val Boite. At the basis of this lab we found the codex, the hardware and speculation around poetry, aesthetic and policy of space. An effort for open-source teaching and learning, in which we’ll muse over art and technology. A strenght of this lab is the context in which students and teachers produce an artwork together, and at the same time learn to use and teach themselves new instruments, like small inspectors, desectors, and actuators. The Lab will take place in the Lower Cabin at the Colonia and in the Lab at the M Pavilion.

Nuovo Spazio di Casso and Two calls for Vajont

The exhibitive activity at the Nuovo Spazio di Casso will begin again on Saturday, July the 18th. Saturday, July the 18th, at 5 PM the results of the International Artistic Contest Two Calls for Vajont, launched by Dolomiti Contemporanee in June 2014, will be made public. With the occasion, Twocalls, the shape of ideas will be inaugurated; a display of some of the projects selected for the final phase of the Contest, is going to be inaugurated as well. Through this exhibit the genesys, the meaning, and the current state of this ideative contest-project, which aims to rethink the relationship between history, tragedy, and the human, physical, cultural landscape of the Vajont area is told.
The exhibit will remain open from the 18th of July to the 16th of August, and will be open for visits from Thursday to Sunday, from 10 AM to 12:30 PM and from 3 PM to 7 PM.

The events scheduled for Casso and the Friulan Dolomites during the summer will be presented as well, and they include the second edition of the format of Paesaggi Contemporanei (Eng.: contemporary landscapes), inaugurated in 2014 with Marc Augé, and that this year will have as guests, among others, Pier Luigi Sacco and Giannola Nonino, and the collective exhibit Tonon ignà, which will be realised in collaboration with Stefano Moras (artists: Pamela Breda, Veronica De Giovannelli, Stefano Moras, Lorenzo Commisso, Roberto Da Dalt, Nicolas Magnant, Lara Marconi, Made in Lucania (Evelyn Leveghi), and that will take place between August the 22nd and September the 26th.

August-october 2015, Former Paper Factory of Vas

The former Paper Factory of Vas is the new “construction site” of DC. The spectacular compund will become a space of artistic and cultural experimentation. A Residency program is going to kick off in August (Elena Carozzi, Beatrice Meoni, Philippa Peckham, Maja Thonnen, Silvia Vendramel, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Giuseppe Vigolo). We’ll work on some guiding themes, linked to the war-like regeneration of the location and its past, and to the production of new image-guides for its present.

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The web of Dolomiti Contemporanee

Patronage: Ministry of the Environment, Dolomiti UNESCO Foundation, National Council of Architects, Planners, Landscape Architects and Keepers, Veneto Region, Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Pordenone Province, Udine Province, BIM Piave, Belluno Dolomites Industrail Federation, Erto and Casso Municipality, Borca di Cadore Municipality, Belluno Province,Claut Municipality, Cimolais Municipality, Vajont Municipality, Longarone Municipality, Belluno Municipality, Vajont Foundation, Friulan Dolomites Natural Park, GAL Alto Bellunese, Montagna Leader.

Cultural partners: Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Merz Turin Foundation, Strozzina Contemporary Culture Centre, Modern and Contemporary Art Museum of Trento and Rovereto Mart, Institut Français, Association d.c.a., Real Academia de España en Roma, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice – m.a.c.Lab, Progetto iccs, Mario Rimoldi Museum, Neonlauro, Studio Gellner, Leapfactory, Tabacco, Archeologia Industriale.

Media partner: Artribune, Espoarte, AreaArte, Bra.Ba.M.

Fundamental Partners: Minoter-Cualbu Group, Enel, Acqua Dolomia, DB Group. Partner: Grappa Nonino, Eolo NGI, Cuprum Elettromeccanica, De Bona Motors, Salus, Cooperativa Mazarol, Nuovi Progetti, Idrotermolux, Ecopietra, Sips Italia, D’Incà & C., Lattebusche, Conte D’Attimis Maniago, Birra Dolomiti, Vipa Ristorazione, Salewa, Dolomite, Impresa Artecos, Gioc Hotel, Lèbon, Cason Marmi, Procaffè/Bristot, Cervo Bianco, Ristorante Cianzia, Birraria Bauce, Pro Loco di Erto e Casso, SuperW, Sta srl, Magif Telecomunicazioni, Gi-Erre Elettronica, Color Service, CMI Centro Noleggio, Dal Farra Flavio, Libreria Tarantola, Lomax Servizi, Deon, Grava Angelo & Edy, Krea, Dolomiè, Tecno Isolamenti, Orzes Termoidraulica, Piave Maitex, De Rigo, La.Bell, Planet Ottica, Alpe del Nevegal, Biasiotto Vini, Diab, Limana Costruzioni, Hermann, D-Shape.

The official Press Conference, open to the public, will take place inside the Eni Village of Borca di Cadore, important “constriction site” for DC ever since last year, when the Progettoborca platform was introduced. The Village (Colonia, new Progettoborca offices, Our Lady of the Cadore Church) will be open to the public.

At 2 PM, the journalists and public will be welcomed in the new offices of DC in Borca, inside the former reception building of the Colonia, another one of Gellner’s creations (Via Mattei 5). Everyone will then move to the Lower Cabin of the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building), where the Press Conference will take place. Here, the projects and schedule of the summer-autumn season of DC will be presented, relating to both  Borca and Casso (Nuovo Spazio di Casso), to the International Artistic Contest Two calls for Vajont, to the new sites (Paper Factory of Vas) and to the new active collaborations. The TERRAFORMAZIONE Communication Campaign by Fabio Balcon of Bra_ba_m will also be presented. Some never-before-seen artworks, realised in the last few weeks by the artists taking part in the Residency program in Borca, will also be shown.

schedule:

2 PM: reception at the new offices of Progettoborca, realised thanks to the support of Minoter. The offices occupy the former reception building of the Colonia, another one of Gellner’s creations (Via Mattei 5). They house an area of public reception and info-point on the Village, and a bookshop put together with the collaboration of the Tarantola Bookshop of Belluno (texts on Gellner, Scarpa and on the architecture of the mountain, on art and design, on mountaineering and landscape), as well as the offices of Dolomiti Contemporanee. The building is also the new way into the Colonia.

2:30 PM: Lower Cabin in the Colonia: official Press Conference for the launch of the fifth season of Dolomiti Contemporanee, with the presentation of the projects and activities that will take place in Borca, Casso, and in the area of the Vajont, at the former Paper Factory of Vas, and other sites. The Communication Campaign 2015, titled TERRAFORMAZIONE, realised by Fabio Balcon of Bra_ba_m will also be presented.

3:30-5:30 PM: Open-studio at the Colonia,  along with a visit to the structure and a presentation of the new artworks realised by the artists taking part in the residency project (Min-Ji Kim, Michelangelo Penso, Marta Allegri, Gianni De Val).

5:30 PM: Visit to the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore.

6:30 PM: Happy Hour-buffet on the balcony of the Auditorium (Colonia).

6:30 PM: music-performance at the Bear’s Cage.

Over 400 the people who have come by Borca, between morning and night, on Saturday May the 16th, during the first open-studio of the season, curated by Dolomiti Contemporanee in Progettoborca.
And it was everything but a mass carnival, no country festivals on Gellner, naturally, and the quality, because numbers are relative, but quality, in things and people (and thus in the the so called public), is absolute.
And no rain, light seeping through until twilight: we’ve taken it all.
New spaces have been prepared, inside the endless Colonia (Eng.: Summer Camp Building), and presented to the public.
Made of many artists, cutrators, architects; of guests came from far away; of friends and the DC group, which has handled the complex event and the enthropic fluxes; of many young and not young people of Borca and the valley, came to see this slice of their territory and history again, now re-opened; of the administrators of this land, who work together with us; and of the climbers of Partyblock, ready for the parade, who have climbed, and traced the blocks.
The inner Spaces, and the outer ones, were full of things; artworks, and performances most of all, which are the best instrument to turn back on these Spaces, which were just waiting to be taken up and lived aain, and that still breathed, in the continuous transit from concrete to green, every open door, the two organisms permeating one another in a rhythm.
The perfomance of Madame Murmure, making the sound of its cut tree resonate dramatically; the one by Marta Allegri, who has thrown bricks and prepared a soup, to change the smell of the recovered lodging and of the Colonia, together with Adolf Loos (parole nel vuoto). The one by Sandro Cecchin and Francesco Fantozzi, who have played, electric and acoustic, in peripatetics and sets, through the halls, the corridors, and the ramps, the woods and the cabins; the boulderists who tried out their climbing shoes on the walls of the pavilions.
The great terrace of the Auditorium has received people, after the first, long tour through the Colonia, nourished by these and other things for three hours.
And then, in the evening, the visit to Our Lady of the Cadore, walking up the woods from the Overlook-Boite Hotel.
And then again in the Cottages, where Progettoborca‘s artist Residency lays, and where the pines and the firs get inside the houses by the balconies, and there, finally, the rain did come, and Mt. Pelmo got all worked up.
Coming soon the photos of everything, and the videos, and the excerpt from TGRegione Veneto, and then the national news. While we’re in Casso today, where the exhibit of the projects which have reached the finals in the TWOCALLS contest is still open.
And on we go.

And thus, on Saturday May the 16th, in occasion of the Cadore’s Culture Week, the incredible structure of the Colonia will once again be open to the public. It will be possible to visit Gellner’s architectural creation, and see the artworks realised by the artists in these first few months of activities, while they themselves are there.
These are the artists who worked in Borca: Marco Andrighetto, Marta Allegri, Chiara Bergamo, Elisa Bertaglia,Gino Blanc, Gianni De Val, Fabiano De Martin Topranin, Sandra Hauser, Jérémy Laffon, Stefano Moras, Luka Sirok.
Some never before seen artworks will be presented as well.

The guided tour will go on further, and reach some of the other structures of the Village.
If the weather will be good, at around 4:30 PM it will be possible for us all to move from the Colonia to reach the Church of Our Lady of the Cadore. The vehicle accessibility of the parking lot is prohibited at this time by order of the Firefighters, because of some maintanance that is being carried out.
The visit will thus be possible starting from the parking lot of the Boite Hotel, and reaching the Church through a very short path in the woods, to access the church from its main entrance.

The back area and its immediate vicinity remain forbidden to the public, which will not be able to move around in the area marked by the bi-coloured tape.
In case of rain, the visit to the Church will not be carried out.

The appointment is at 2 PM, on Saturday May the 16th, and the meeting point if the Sales Office (Ufficio Vendite, in Italian on the signs), inside the Village.

Here the directions to get to the Village (once inside, please follow the sings pointing to the Sales Office/Ufficio Vendite).
Duration of the visit: about two hours.

Meanwhile, we’re working on new projects, artistic, cultural, and strategic ones, many of them, which will be carried out during the Summer and Autumn of 2015, giving more and more light to the magic Village, that needs to live.

The snow creates damn magic: it’s so strong, in its persistent fairness, that sometimes, for somebody (kai), seems to generate strong rhetorical images.

The snow cloaks everything, and it’s like Christmas all over again.

Right?

Wrong: Dickensian paranoia.

(a little like some curators or ephebic artists, who are afraid, cowardly, of specificity’s strength, and who would always like to make ethereal and light and transparent things: air could fall out of their heads at any moment).

The snow is marvellous because it falls light and slow, but it stacks up, heavily and dangerously.

The snow is kitsch for those who don’t know what the mountain is, maybe, and watches the images on the TV.

The snow is heave and dangerous, we’ve said: like the mountain, again: that’s why white images can themselves sometimes feel too charged, nauseating.

But, again, this happens to those who can’t stand being under it.

During the night of the 6^th, while it obsessively fell, and the morning of the 7^th, as it glittered, and then almost immediately transformed and exuded, Giacomo De Donà and Sergio Casagrande have portrayed the cloaked, pressed, silent Village; made heavy, sunken.

Here the pictures.

Meanwhile, in the Colonia, we walked, worked: took the spider webs off the windows.

photos: Giacomo De Donà

Photos: Sergio Casagrande