Alpenprojekt

Alpenprojekt videos register the action of cutting the skyline in the alpine mountains. The footage was taken at different sites in the Alps. The cutouts evoke the European tradition from the 18th century to depict portraits with scissors and paper. A deliberate intent to apprehend the landscape within a unique line in a reduced dimension is the main issue in Alpenprojekt I and II. To react in the face of this specific landscape as an effort to embrace what is not controllable became a fundamental issue in the Alpenprojekt series of works. Alpenprojekt began with artistic research related to the southern German region closely connected with its physical landscape. Its representation was then perceived as a memory heritage of historical facts, either forgotten or intentionally lost. The entire project is called Trilogy of the Mountains, and it is related to memory and history. Trilogy of the Mountains comprises three phases: Alpenprojekt, based on the alpine landscape; the second one approaches Beckton Alps, an artificial mountain in east London; and the third part is related to artificial mountains made with war debris in Germany. Each piece of the Trilogy comprises a series of works. The project was initially developed based on landscapes where the notion of Romanticism is still present. Then the project was set toward the post-industrialization period—and finally related to reshaping the topography in Germany after WWII. In Trilogy of Mountains, the tension between natural and artificial is a central issue, being rather complementary than the opposite.

The alpine rural landscape as a cultural reserve: the case study of Teglio in Valtellina

This research examines a portion of the Italian alpine landscape in order to find a comprehension mode and a strategic proposal to safeguard this rural heritage. The area is located in Valtellina, in the municipality of Teglio (Sondrio, Italy), between 700 and 1200 m a.s.l. Typical characteristic of the local landscape conformation is fragmentation, which determines a rapidly changing chequerboard depending on the rotation of seasons and cultivation. The landscape alternates wooded and cultivated areas. Cultivations mainly concern rye, buckwheat, corn, barley, alpine wheat, chestnuts and small orchards and have a wide agrobiodiversity and especially a historical and cultural value. The cultivation of buckwheat, for example nustran arrived in the valley in the XVII century and Teglio is the place where it persists more. The genotypes present are in part already classified, in part under study. The vernine crop alternated to buckwheat is mainly rye, arrived in the valley since the XV century. The local varieties formed over time are a resource of genotypes adapted to high altitude agricultural environments, they have important nutraceutical properties and they are closely associated with the local culture. The aim was to verify the persistence of traditional crops in the area, together with the cultural value of the traditional rural system, in order to analyse the feasibility of a strategy for the preservation of biocultural diversity. The research has shown how, despite the dynamics of depopulation and abandonment of agricultural fields, there is still in the area a sufficient permanence of cultural practices and social uses that can be a solid starting point for a sustainable development of the territory that focuses on agricultural and cultural biodiversity.

„Minél magasabbra!” Az Alpok megmászása a XIX. századtól napjainkig [Recenzió P. Clastres, D. Debons, J-F. Pitteloud, & G. Quin (szerk.) Gravir les Alpes du XIXe siècle à nos jours. Pratiques, émotions, imaginaires. című könyvéről]

The recently published book of studies aims to tell the story of the mountaineers of the past, showing their relationship with the Alpine landscape through their writings, drawings and photographs. It takes us from the early expeditions to the speed climbers of the present day, while answering many questions: among others what attracted the lovers of rocks, what did they hope for and fear on their journeys through the high mountains. The book is multidisciplinary, the authors are mostly historians and archivists, but there are also sociologists, geographers, economists, ethnologists and philosophers of art among them. The history of mountaineering shows the impact of alpinism on the development of the lagging regions, the relationship between town and country, the imprint of social changes, as well as the explanation of the orientation towards new, untrodden paths and unknown landscapes. Given the above, alpine tourism developments should not only consider climate change, but also the social and psychological processes that attract people to the mountains.

The Depth Beneath, The Height Above

The Depth Beneath, The Height Above consists in an exploration of the high alpine region of Robiei, southern Switzerland. Conceived as a sensory piece, the film particularly focuses on the existing relationships between the humans, animals, infrastructural and natural elements that compose Robiei's specific landscape. Through a juxtaposition between the aesthetics and activities that takes place above - the continuous stream of water, the movement of animals, the processes of production of cheese - and respectively below the ground level - the mechanisms, machines and technologies involved in the hydroelectric production, as well as the humans interacting with them -, the film seek to grasp the natureculture and multispecies assemblages through which Robiei and many other contemporary Swiss alpine landscape are being produced.

Le case di Lois Welzenbacher, dispositivi che reinventano lo spazio alpino

"As an exponent of that “Tyrolean” generation of architects that in the Germanspeaking central-eastern Alps will be decisive in the specific declination of the themes of architectural modernity within the mountain context, Lois Welzenbacher realizes, between the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, a series of houses and villas that reinvent the relationship between architecture and Alpine environment in completely new and inaugural terms. The Buchroithner house built in 1928-30 in Zell am See, the Rosenbauer house built in 1929-30 in Linz, and the Buchroithner house built in 1932 again in Zell am See establish a new way of relating to the space and to the Alpine landscape: they incorporate the mountain landscape, and at the same time they transform and change in relation to the topographic morphology of the site, giving life to an architecture that builds a relational dialectic with its surroundings in a completely new way. In this respect, the works of Lois Welzenbacher represent a decisive threshold in the conceptualization of the construction in the Alps."

The Roads, Tracks, Paths, and Ropeways of the First World War: An Opportunity to Preserve, Maintain, and Valorize Alpine Landscape

This research aims at understanding how to reuse infrastructure built in the Alps during the First World War to facilitate access to upland areas, increasingly used for tourism, sports, and hiking, but neglected in terms of maintenance. In other words, the main goal here is to improve and preserve the state of the mountain environment (including forests, meadows, pastures, etc.) through the reuse of historical infrastructures such as ropeways and mule tracks. Any form of reactivation of the now abandoned military logistics system, consisting of roads, mule-tracks, paths, and ropeways would enable the currently depopulated places to initiate a new and virtuous cycle. In this way, controlled planning would allow adequate maintenance to be provided for those natural and anthropic landscapes which have been progressively deprived of a productive role. The condition of abandonment and the lack of maintenance of the Alpine landscape have allowed the abundant rains of recent years, which are the result of climate change, to damage the forests of northern Italy and cause a series of hydrogeological landslides. That said, it could be assumed that the conversion of abandoned mule tracks, paths, and ropeways would not only help preserve a healthy Alpine environment but would also contribute to control these phenomena. Furthermore, it would be a way of giving new use to the historical infrastructures that played such an important role in the early 1900s, recognizing in this way their historical value. The transformation of the Alpine landscape and the building of the infrastructures involved all the lines of the front which were located on the mountains. Therefore, the choice of the Asiago Plateau, a portion of the Venetian Prealps comprised between the provinces of Vicenza and Trento, is just paradigmatic, namely, it reflects the features of a more widespread situation. However, the laws promoted by the Italian state have, as their objective, the recovery and maintenance of forts, trenches and buildings of historical value, but do not include the mountain territory that surrounds them. Therefore, reusing the infrastructures from the First World War would allow the whole landscape to be kept active.