The Forest Feast is a research project organized by Annalaura Fornasier, MA Architecture student at the Royal College of Art in London.

The thesis project wishes to use Vaia storm as a trigger of change that could be taking place in the Alpine territory of the Dolomites in the North-East of Italy. The project investigates the role that culture can acquire in the management of the post-Vaia context. If culture is seen as an agent, how can it mediate in a post-disaster landscape? How can food, as a cultural element, become a tool for the interpretation and management of the post-Vaia Dolomites? The design and methodology that stems from this research will aim to evaluate how local culture can approach and re-assess a landscape affected by a disastrous event, and how it can be translated into a place of opportunity.

The Forest Feast aim at investigating the role that culture can acquire in the management of the post-Vaia context. A first instance, that has been identified through which to engage with the post-Vaia context, is by focusing on the culture of food. Food becomes a vessel through which to ask questions about place and explore the site. The thesis identifies different ways of mediating with the landscape, at first through the engagement with food, by foraging, preparing, cooking and eating. This first instance of the project culminated in the preparation of a banquet, a forum where questions on culture, landscape and regeneration were all laid out on the table. A second mediation was done through the use of film and cinematic techniques to record the banquet and the interaction between the guests invited to feast on it. The film explores how the relationship between the banquet and the context, its guests and the themes suggested through the dishes prepared can be portrayed and used to develop a reaction.

The banquet, entitled the Forest Feast, was made possible thanks to the collaboration with chef Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun, initiator of Prometheus_Open Food Lab. Lorenzo prepared a menu based on his experimental research with foraged edibles gathered from the Cadore forests and paired with exotic elements. Dolomiti Contemporanee hosted the banquet at Progettoborca, Ex-Eni Village (Borca di Cadore, Belluno, Veneto, Italy): an iconic place of encounter between landscape and architectural intervention. The Forest Feast banquet wished to be an opportunity for dialogue, between locals and foresters on Vaia, issues of landscape and ideas of regeneration. Dialogues and opinions emerged from the meal, will contribute to developing the next phase of the thesis project: a strategy for the design of a future post-disaster cultural landscape.

In collaboration with:

Director, editor, set design: Annalaura Fornasier
Chef: Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun
Guest, set design: Angelica Furlotti
Guest: Elena Maierotti
Guest: Palalo Cargnel
Guest: Gianluca D’Incà Levis
Chef: Lorenzo Barbasetti di Prun
Chef assistant and production support: Camilla Glorioso
Drone and Camera: Alessandro Lana
Photography, Camera, set design: Luca Anzalone
Location: Progettoborca (Borca di Cadore, Belluno, Veneto, Italy)
Sound Design: Tommaso Mosole
Footage from: 1858, 2020, 5:56” – Formafantasma, Cambio – 2020

Radioborcia is an independent platform of audio web streaming, designed and powered by g. olmo stuppia.

The project was lunched in September 2015, when the artist carried out his first Residency stay at the former Eni VIllage of Borca di Cadore, in the context of Progettoborca, the regenerative platform activated here by Dolomiti Contemporanee (DC) in 2014.

Radioborcia presents itself as a behavioural and auditory artwork. Its “wave” mainly broadcasts the Contemporary Auditory Landscape. In Borca, the radio station is housed in the former reception building of the Colonia (Via Mattei n. 5), now the location of DC‘s bookshop and offices – another one of Gellner’s creations.

The radio works for the development of a Utopic and Dystopic narration, nourishing it with voices of guests (artists, intellectuals), of inhabitants of Borca di Cadore, and of the people that now come to the Village with the intent of exploring it, attracted by the work of cultural catalyst that DC keeps conducting here.

The radio is a device for collective and individual listening: it is generated among chance, meeting, study and elements of the surrounding Nature. The rustling of the trees, the creakings, the sounds produced inside the great, silent spaces of the Colonia, becoming rough matter of auditory elaboration.

This past September, for a week, Olmo has continuously broadcasted from Borca, gathering sounds, statements, interviews, fragments of the life and works within Progettoborca.

In the following months, Radioborcia has shifted, becoming mobile: the activity continued from Milan first, and then from Paris.

All the material recorded are gathered and archived in Radioborcia‘s Tumblr page (http://radioborcia.tumblr.com/), where they continue to remain available.

Now Radioborcia comes back to its native station, in Borca, where g. Olmo Stuppia and Alexander Darkish have been working, live 24/7, from January the 4th, to the 10th of the same month.

The theme of the winter session has been The concept of listening (Expansion of sculpture).
The pivot of this session has been the Field Recording, and will lead to the production of a vinyl (as an artwork) of Radioborcia. The vinyl will be realised and printed in collaboration with the dj/director Alessandro del Vigna (stage name Alexander Darkish - https://darkish.bandcamp.com), who is, too, attending a Residency program in Borca during the month of January.

Field recording

We’ve been back to hunting, for a long time. Devices to produce sounds of various kinds have been created, too… more audio and other videos have been interconnected with the already copious material gained during our past session (2nd-12th of September 2015). A small drone has been employed as well, for flyover shots and gathering of video/sounds.

Interviews (curated by Alexander Darkish)
Proliferation of Pornography in Failed Future Environment

Marco Barotti, artist, musician and actor, collective Plastique Fantastique, Berlin
Pamela Breda, artist, Venice
Ben Cozmo, productor e member of the Newcleus, New York
Jerome D’estais, reviwer and writer, Paris
Simona Faraone, dj, Florence
Virgo Four, house music duo, Chicago
Janna Maria Nandzik, director, Berlin
Naya Pascual, postporno actor and poet, Barcelona-Berlin
Alex Puddu, musician and author of “The Golden Age Of Danish Pornography” series, Copenhagen
Miriam Secco, artist, Venice
Lior Shamriz, director, Los Angeles-Berlin
Danilo Rasori, director, member of Platoon Kunsthalle, Berlin
Amy Tuxworth, cinematographic producer, Sydney-Berlin

Interviews (curated by g. olmo stuppia)
Listening, recovery time posture

Stefano Andi, architect, Forma e Flusso, Milan
Amed Ben Dihjab, painter and performer, co-director of Celebrazione Festival, Tunis – Paris
Saverio Bonato, artist, Schio-Venice
Renzo Bortolot, President of Magnifica Comunita del Cadore, Cadore
Martina Conti, performer, London-San Marino
Viola Conti, producer and performer, IUAV professor, San Marino-London
Iolanda Da Deppo, Gal Alto Bellunese, Cadore
Giovanni De Donà, artist, Berlin-Bologna
Michele Merlo, Studio Gellner, Cortina d’Ampezzo
Marcella Morandini, Dolomiti UNESCO Fondation, Cortina
Marcella Giulia Pace, former ENI Village guest, Ragusa-Cadore
Mattia Pajè, artist, Bologna-Milan
Michelangelo Penso, artist, Mestre (VE)
Oreste Scalzone, writer, Paris
Simona Squadrito, philosopher and curator, director of TRWOWB, Milan
Marta Vianello and Gianmarco Cogusi, METRICUBI, Venice

Radioborcia on RADIOFM

Launch interview with Nives Milani on RadioCortina
4/01/16 h.11.10

FM Sessions with Guido Beretta on RadioBelluno
7/01/16 h.11

Readings

T.S. Eliot , Four Quartets
curated by Alexander Darkish

S. Sontag, Interpretazioni Tendenziose, cap. II e III Estetica del Silenzio e Immaginazione pornografica
curated by Alexander Darkish & g. olmo stuppia

M. Tafuri, Progetto e Utopia
curated by g. olmo stuppia

M. Raponi, Strategie del Rumore
curated by g. olmo stuppia

R. Barthes, L’impero dei Segni
curated by g. olmo stuppia

E. Gellner, Quasi un Diario: appunti autobiografici di un architetto
curated by g. olmo stuppia with Marta Allegri

N. Zedd, J. Mekas, D. Wojnarowicz, R. Kern, L. Lunch (…), 

“You Killed Me First”, Cinema Of Transgression’s Manifesto, Edited By Susanne Pfeffer

 Vynil

Eric Lewis, one of the two founding members of historical House duo Virgofour from Chicago, sent us his music piece for the vinyl produced in collaboration with Darkish and presented as a piece of art for Radioborcia in the context of Progetto Borca.
The concept was developed during the residency with the aim not only to produce a sound sculpture in situ, but to extend the research including an incursion coming from a different context, Chicago, USA.
The vinyl project is focused on the combination between two different impressions translated in music.
Virgofour Series worked from Chicago. Darkish worked from ex Villaggio ENI designed by Edoardo Gellner (Borca di Cadore).
The two tracks will be printed on a Vinyl, one for each side. We will print three certified copies presented as an art work. The vinyl object is conceived as the John Keats’ Grecian Urn and it exists as a sculpture in addition to his sound content.
From Chicago to Borca di Cadore, a far-fetched connection, utopistically carried out. A mirage that creates a link between modernist dolomitic sharp peaks and geometries of an american metropolis.

More info at:

www.radioborcia.tumblr.com
www.observatorylandscape.org
www.progettoborca.net
www.dolomiticontemporanee.net

info@progettoborca.net
radioborcia@gmail.com

Phone: +39 334 7374093

Drone I

Drone II

Radioborcia – last day
2016 live set Darkish Audio

g.olmo stuppia

Here the website
Here the dedicated facebook page

Photos: Archivio Industriale Italiano, Marco Andrighetto, Lucia Coco, g.olmo stuppia

Here a video of The Misha Sessions

Here an interwiev to Pier Luigi Sacco.