In 2014, I was invited by Elisa Lenhard and Francesca Solero to create a site-specific intervention at Pian della Mussa, on the border between Italy and France.
The exploration started with a virtual survey: cartographic maps of mountain routes and online digital images produced by satellites and the iss, came together to create a first drawing of the valley. Each line on the map was a gesture of prefiguration of real routes and passes from Pian della Mussa to Passo d’Arnas: a border and passage point, significant both in a historical and contemporary perspective.
I followed the trail of water like a diviner, curious to see where it would take me: it took me out of the earth’s atmosphere, among astronauts, into a super-technological world where water is still an umbilical cord that connects everything to the earth and its resources.
What resulted was an unpredictable path of geographical and extraterrestrial space. A space connected and shaped by the waterway that runs from Arnas to Turin; from Turin to Rotterdam, and then to the French Guiana to finally end up at the International Space Station.
This exploration, carried out through drawing, performative actions and small aesthetic infiltrations into the daily life of the shelters, has surprisingly led me to talk about the mountains through a vision that is closer to science fiction perspectives than to the historiographic and conservative dimensions with which we often approach the mountains. This groping around also led me to try my hand for the first time at a format that was new to me (and immediately loved): the artist’s book. A new series of drawings also emerged: images created to organise in a book the coincidences, actions and associations gathered in two years of quiet and excited exploration of a territory that is larger than expected.