GAMeC presents Cara Montagna (Dear Mountain), a new podcast series curated and produced by radio author Ilaria Gadenz and conceived with curator Valentina Gervasoni, which will be available on the RaiPlay Sound platform starting December 19.
Produced in 2025 as part of the editorial projects of Thinking Like a Mountain, GAMeC’s cultural program which, under the artistic direction of Lorenzo Giusti, has promoted a path of sharing artistic experiences to reflect on sustainability and collectivity, the series consists of five episodes that reinterpret the mountain landscape as a complex ecosystem, composed of human and non-human co-existences, stories, economies, vulnerabilities, and imaginaries.
Dear Mountain unfolds as a correspondence in (audio)letters that attempts to give back to the mountain what we have learned by thinking and listening like it. More than a mountain podcast, it is an exercise in proximity, an invitation to reflect on how we inhabit territories and how, in turn, they transform us. The project encourages considering the mountain not only as a physical place but as a perspective: a change of scale, speed, and distance from which to observe the transformations of the present. Dear Mountain thus becomes a research in motion, attentive to the changes in the landscape, the ways we inhabit and experience it, and the interdependencies that traverse it.
The voices of researchers, artists, anthropologists, geographers, and mountain experts trace a path exploring the relationship between territories and human and more-than-human communities. Through themes such as care, the evolution of the concept of “wilderness,” and the rights of nature, the series invites us to rethink how we inhabit and interpret the mountain today.
Alongside these conversations, Dear Mountain integrates sound recordings collected along the trails of the Orobie Alps: footsteps on snow, rustling forests, voices of streams, mineral echoes. These acoustic landscapes become interlocutors—living presences that guide the narrative and invite us to pause and listen.
LISTEN
(Podcast in Italian language)
1 – Beyond the Tree Line
Researcher and curator Elena Biserna, artist Daniel Maier-Reimer, and GAMeC Director Lorenzo Giusti invite us to “think like a mountain,” guided by the pace, deep listening, and a gaze capable of multiplying. The walk becomes a perceptual practice, the ear an instrument of orientation, and sight a field of possibilities. Together, they lead us through a journey of detours and shifting viewpoints, to read a transforming reality through multiple, slow, and layered perspectives.
2 – From Dresden to Roccaraso
Guided by the words of Paolo Valoti—a seasoned walker and former President of CAI Bergamo—and the imagination of artist Haevan Lee, this episode explores what it means today to “go to the mountains.” A journey spanning eras and sensibilities, from Caspar David Friedrich’s romantic and vertiginous visions to the contemporary desire for nature as a space for escape, care, or regeneration. Between overtourism, the search for solitude, and communities forming along the trail, the concept of “wilderness” emerges not as a remote, untouched place but as a cultural construct in constant metamorphosis.
3 – The Community Is a Trail That Opens Only by Walking It Together
Through the voices of artist and performer Marta Cuscunà and critic and curator Cecilia Guida, this episode explores community as something built relationship by relationship. A shared whole that includes humans and non-humans, material and immaterial presences, territories, and memories. Through their reflections, walking becomes a political and ecological practice: a way to learn from our surroundings, imagine forms of coexistence that transcend species boundaries, and recognize that belonging is an ongoing process of transformation.
4 – Inhabiting the Mountain
This episode is a sound journey branching in three directions. With geographer Mauro Varotto, we explore what it truly means to “inhabit the mountain,” to think of it and care for it. With artist and researcher Lia Mazzari, we venture into a territory of radical listening, where even a glacier becomes a living score capable of narrating the planet’s transformations. Finally, with artist Mikhail Karikis, we expand the horizon to a time beyond our own, through the principle of the “seven generations,” an inheritance from many indigenous cultures that invites us to act today with awareness of those who will inhabit the planet after us.
5 – We Are Stone, We Are Sky
From the mineral density of the earth, the gaze moves toward the sky. A journey into the hidden vitality of matter guided by anthropologist Emanuela Borgnino, who shows how, in many cultures, stones are considered sentient beings. Recognizing the subjectivity of the mountain thus becomes a radical act, capable of opening the way to the rights of nature, new forms of collective representation, and a possible—and necessary—dialogue with what we have long considered silent.
