The Bergamo territory is defined by its pre-Alpine ecosystem – a stratified landscape where rocky peaks dissolve into valleys, and montane forests coexist with industrialized plains. Within this environment, GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo developed Thinking Like a Mountain – The Orobie Biennial, an experimental program that, over 2024-2025, radically reconsidered the relationship between cultural institutions and Alpine territories.
Drawing on ecologist Aldo Leopold’s expression “thinking like a mountain”– adopting long-term perspectives, recognizing systemic interconnections, embracing slowness – the project translated this paradigm into methodological inversion: rather than bringing art to the mountains, it prioritized listening and rooting interventions in a place, allowing artistic responses to emerge from genuine community needs.
Unfolding over two years rather than in a single moment, the project enabled authentic relationships among artists, museum, and both human and more-than-human communities, respecting the rhythms of alpine farmers, forest rangers, mountain associations, and the territory’s natural cycles.
Twenty-five artistic projects crossed the province, from high-altitude municipalities to industrial areas, creating site-specific interventions through participatory processes: Gabriel Chaile’s bread oven functions as sculpture, social space, and ongoing activation; Julius von Bismarck’s monumental painting on Dossena mine’s rock walls; EX.’s reconstruction of the Aldo Frattini mountain shelter at 2,300 meters – a permanent legacy ensuring minimal environmental impact while serving as base for environmental monitoring and scientific research.
Thinking Like a Mountain addressed a dual challenge: countering mass tourism rhetoric that transforms mountains into consumable scenery, and rethinking the art biennial format itself – typically concentrated, urban, globally mobile. It proposed instead a local, slow, calibrated alternative, generating shared reflections and reciprocal transformations through encounter rather than extracting symbolic value or impoverishing inherited knowledge.
What remains extends beyond artworks to encompass relationships: a museum that learned to listen before planning, communities discovering new readings of their landscapes, artists experimenting with territorial rootedness.
