SPEDIZIONE CIMA CAREGA. SIT DOWN TO HAVE AN IDEA
Andrea Bianconi
Curated by Giuseppe Frangi
Cima Carega
5 July 2020
Andrea Bianconi’s artistic performance is the result of thoughts pondered during the lockdown: the search for a denied but much sought-after freedom, the desire to escape from the four walls of one’s home and go upstairs to admire the world from above. Andrea Bianconi’s latest artistic idea matured during the period in which most of humanity was forced to remain isolated: to bring art into a boundless space and from there to contaminate it in the most absolute silence. This is how the idea materialized on Sunday 5 July 2020: to take an armchair from the Sit Down to Have an Idea project to the top of a mountain, the highest peak in the small Dolomites. Spedizione Cima Carega is the new performance designed by Andrea Bianconi in collaboration with Casa Testori and the Fondazione Coppola. Together with the artist, the protagonists were a group of runners who, in 10-minute shifts, carried the armchair from Revolto refuge (1,336 metres) to Cima Carega at 2,259 metres (with a difference in altitude of 1,000 metres). A mountain far from everything, but from where one can admire a landscape that touches three different regions: Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.
The project is a dream come true for Andrea Bianconi. As curator Giuseppe Frangi writes in his critical text «It is a physical landscape that has probably also become a mental landscape: we can imagine that in Bianconi’s childhood dreams as a child, that mountain was the scene of who knows what kind of adventures. Given that an artist always remains a child, Andrea’s dreams today are not very different. And perhaps one of his dreams was to make the mountain an extension of his usual spaces… He has now imagined this upgrade: to take the armchair up as if it were a celebratory rite. Handing it over to the rarefied space of the mountain for safekeeping and so that, from up there, it can radiate the air below with its generous, positive emissions».
One of the chairs, after invading the city of Bologna in every corner – squares, monuments, public offices, schools, restaurants – has arrived on the Cima Carega thanks to the collaboration of the Durona Teamrunners who created the Durona Trail, an extreme race from the Chiampo Valley to the Little Dolomites and the Lessinia Natural Park, with a difference in altitude of 2,800 metres. There it will remain forever, on the summit that embraces the three regions, available to those who wish to venture up to the summit and enjoy the extraordinary panorama from there. The work will be taken care of by the Fraccaroli Refuge, which has been run by the Baschera family for over 50 years. The arrival and departure point for most of the excursions in the chain, the Mario Fraccaroli Refuge (2,239 metres) is located just below Cima Carega (2,259 metres) in the municipality of Ala (province of Trento). Built in 1952, the refuge is surrounded by a panoramic terrace that sweeps over most of the Eastern Alps, from the Dolomites and the Pale di San Martino to the Brenta Dolomites, and as far as Venice and the Adriatic Sea on exceptionally clear days.
Andrea Bianconi’s project has opened up spaces for new forms of art enjoyment, reaching up to the peaks where one can arrive, stop, meditate and enjoy a work of art framed by an extraordinary and infinite natural landscape.
