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12. Thinking Like a Mountain, Not Just Reaching It

“Too many people, too many cars, too much noise. In the mountains, people seek silence.” With these words, Reinhold Messner, interviewed this summer by "Il Dolomiti", commented on yet another case of overtourism in the Alps: crowds, paid turnstiles, trails turned into one-way lanes. Seceda feels like a procession, and the Odle range now requires an entry ticket. An assault on the landscape—often chaotic, impulsive, and mindless.

They call it love for the mountains, but ever more often it resembles an escape to higher altitudes from the city, bringing the same pace and desires that chase us in the lowlands. Selfies, performance, the saturation of places. What should be an encounter becomes consumption.

Lorenzo Giusti

Editorial

11. Of wolves, eagles, and seasons

There is a wolf that guides the people of Bergamo. This is what we learn from the inscription on the front of the former oratory in Via San Tomaso. DIVO LUPO BERGOMATUM DUCI. “Divine Wolf, leader of the Bergamasques.” For those of us who have reread Aldo Leopold, it is a kind of epiphany. In the passage “Thinking Like a Mountain,” to be found in A Sand County Almanac, the American forest ranger reflects on the moment when, as a young man, he killed a she-wolf and saw “a green fire dying in her eyes.”

Lorenzo Giusti

Editorial

10. The Green You Don’t Expect

Over the last few weeks, following the launch of the projects for the third edition of Thinking Like a Mountain, I had the opportunity to attend three of the four performances scheduled up until May as part of the exhibition Fossi io teco; e perderci nel verde, curated by Greta Martina, winner of the 12th edition of the Premio Bonaldi. The experience of participating in these events was intense and led me to think about and rethink our idea of “nature.”

The fact that the artists opted for urban spaces for their performances, where history and architecture mingle with nature, without “fleeing” to the outskirts of the city in search of immersed green spaces, or even simply without favoring urban parks, made me wonder about this choice, which I initially found to be a curious one. And as is often the case, when something arouses one’s curiosity, questions soon follow. Why should we think of urban culture as something distinct from green nature? Why think of nature only in the limited dimension of city parks or mountainside woodlands?


Sara Fumagalli

Editorial

09. Like interweaving threads

Within the recently inaugurated exhibition "Fossi io teco; e perderci nel verde", perhaps better than others, Valentina Viviani’s work—"El deseo de transformarse en montaña para abrazar el cielo" (“The desire to turn into a mountain to embrace the sky”, 2025)—embodies the notion of the mountain as an archetype of natural cyclicity and as a symbol of generational continuity, characteristic of the entire Biennial of the Orobie Mountains. The further we continue with the implementation of the program, the more I feel I can say that what binds together the works of the artists and communities involved is precisely the reflection on life cycles, approached here from various perspectives, both human and “more-than-human” (to quote Anna Tsing again).

Lorenzo Giusti

Editorial

08. With the places: the middle mountains

Every morning my gaze leaves the line of Linzone, climbs the Albenza and Roncola, and then slides along the entire crest of the Val Brembana, which wraps the lower villages at the foot of the valley as if in an embrace. Depending on the time of day and the seasons, the mountains are clad in hues that are never quite the same: from the soft, rosy bronze of dawn to the intense green shade that merges with the shadows of the forests. Each light cast seems to tell a different story, to take a deep breath. As I observe them, I think about how I inhabit (and work in) that living dimension of the “middle mountains”: that area of passage, encounter and ancient stories described by Mauro Varotto, professor of Geography and Cultural Geography at the University of Padua, in his essay Montagne di mezzo. Una nuova geografia (Middle Mountains. A New Geography).

Valentina Gervasoni

Editorial

06. The Orobie Biennial

“Thinking Like a Mountain” aspires to offer a contribution of experiences revolving around the process of revising biennial formats, basing its planning on three principles in contrast with the established ones: “more localized,” “long-term,” and “scaled.” The “Biennial of the Orobie,” as we might now rebaptize the program developed by GAMeC in collaboration with the communities of the extended territory of Bergamo, is an event held not every two years but rather for two years. It is one that does not happen in a place, but with a place, staging projects arising from the encounter between international artists and local communities on a scale that is not “the bigger the better” but variable in respect of the scale of each individual context.

Lorenzo Giusti

Editorial

03. Ubuntu?

In his first editorial essay, Lorenzo Giusti wondered which word may enclose and convey the founding intentions of the biennial program “Thinking Like a Mountain”, which opened last May.
He suggested an English word “togetherness” despite being unsure whether this term could be the best choice.
While reading the explanation of the meanings attributed to this word, the African concept of Ubuntu, a notion I had come across recently, came to mind.
Can a word unknown to most of us capture the ultimate meaning of our project?

Sara Fumagalli

Editorial

04. Understand the flowers and the other voiceless things

"Thinking Like a Mountain" is GAMeC’s invitation to take a “pas de côté”. This step aside allows us to look from a distance and renew our relationship with nature and collectivity through a new point of view and unique artistic processes. In the same spirit, I dedicate today’s In Brief to looking into our relationship with art differently. This opportunity not only entices an alternative view on art but also provides a point of view that is wholly integrated into our individual and communitarian lives. Such an active part of our existence also represents an accessible, everyday tool for reading our world.

Claudia Ferrazzi

Editorial