“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.
This is not about denying the legitimate desire to go see these beautiful mountains everyone talks about. But how we go makes all the difference. Now more than ever, we need a new kind of education—about walking, about distance, about our relationship with the environment. It is from this need that the GAMeC’s program Thinking Like a Mountain was born. It slowly moves amid the valleys, parks, villages, and peaks of the Bergamo province, alongside artists and residents.
This is not about bringing art to the mountains but about bringing thought into the mountains, into the landscape—understood not as a neutral backdrop, but as a living organism to be listened to. Thinking like a mountain means understanding deep time, the delicate balance of ecosystems, and our collective responsibility. It also means exercising a wide perspective, a global mindset with local action, one capable of imagining alternatives.
Through workshops, walks, performances, and participatory practices, GAMeC promotes a different idea of cultural engagement: not the accumulation of experiences, but the building of relationships. Not “going to see,” but “being”—with the body, with time, with others. In this vision, the mountain is not just a summit to be reached, but a mental orientation, an ethical attitude, a different way of being in the world.
One of the most ambitious expressions of this vision is the construction of the new Aldo Frattini Bivouac, which GAMeC is creating thanks to the support of Fondazione Cariplo and Fondazione della Comunità Bergamasca, in collaboration with the Bergamo branch of CAI (Italian Alpine Club), which will become the owner. Located at 2,300 meters above sea level along the Alta Via delle Orobie, the bivouac will serve as an “alternative branch” of the museum at high altitude: a place to pause, to listen, to contemplate. An open, reversible structure, designed to blend into the landscape respectfully, offering protection and silence to those who reach it on foot.
Designed by EX. studio, the Frattini Bivouac will be at the same time a shelter, an aesthetic object, and a scientific tool, with the capacity to collect environmental data and contribute to knowledge of mountain ecosystems. A low-impact piece of architecture, interpreting the mountain as a teacher of balance, and restoring a sense of responsibility to cultural gestures.
The exhibition Mountain Forgets You, held at GAMeC’s Spazio Zero, tells of the long design process that led to the creation of this bivouac: a narrative that brings together the history of mountaineering, contemporary architectural practices, and artistic languages—including Thermocene, an installation by Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas), and EX., which transforms invisible signals gathered at 3,000 meters into a choral symphony. Even from up there, the mountain listens to us. But it’s up to us to decide how to inhabit that distance: as invaders or as guests. As spectators or as part of a larger organism. Thinking like a mountain should mean this: to act slowly, imagine bravely, and create lasting connections between art, communities, and the land.
Lorenzo Giusti
August 2025
