Bivacco has returned to the mountains and will be shown at Kronplatz from 09 July 2020 to 30 Ocotber 2020.
The Alps, often perceived as a barrier, have been crossed for centuries and have always been an important hinge joining northern and southern Europe. Instead of being a land of borders and divisions, Tyrol has always been a place of intensive social and cultural contacts, and indeed today is more multilingual and multicultural than ever before.
2019 marked the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, when Tyrol was divided in two, South Tyrol and Trentino being incorporated into the Italian State. To mark the centenary, ArtinTheAlps Association presented the Bivacco project during the 58th Venice Biennale, based on an idea by the artist Hannes Egger.
Bivouacs are small emergency high mountain shelters, open to all in need of refuge at all times. This emergency shelter was provided by the mountain climber Reinhold Messner. It is named after Günther Messner, Reinhold’s brother, who died tragically in 1970 when climbing the Nanga Parbat.
The artists* Jacopo Candotti, Nicolò Degiorgis, Hannes Egger, Julia Frank, Simon Perathoner, Leander Schönweger and Maria Walcher took part in the project conceived by Hannes Egger and curated by Christiane Rekade. Their works are strictly linked to the land of transition theme, and were on show in the bivouac.
The basic curatorial idea envisaged artists* working on two levels. The first was the physical concept of Bivacco, entailing interaction with the architecture, materials, function and (limited) space of the shelter. The works were created by reacting and interacting with the material structure so as to complete or redefine it as a material object. The second level was to be metaphorical, picking up the meaning of the bivouac as a place of protection, transition, welcome, exchange and transcending of boundaries.
A multilingual catalogue with texts by Roberto De Martin, Hannes Egger, Hannes Obermair, Maxi Obexer and Christiane Rekade as well as Patrizia Spadafora accompanied the artistic project.
Bivacco is shown from 09 July 2020 to 30 Ocotber 2020 at the Kronplatz (Bolzano – Italy). The mountain can be reached with the cabel car. The installation can always be visited, every day, at any time.