The fourth cycle of The Orobie Biennial -Thinking Like a Mountain program, held by GAMeC that engages local communities through the participation of international artists, will open on June 7, 2025.

The Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale in Villa d’Almè will host Spin and Break Free, a performance by Cecilia Bengolea, while works by Julius von Bismarck and Francesco Pedrini will be presented in the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello.

CECILIA BENGOLEA
Spin and Break Free
June 7, 2025
Villa d’Almè

An artist, choreographer, and dancer whose practice spans video, sculpture, and performance, Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires, 1979) often uses dance as a means to stimulate empathy and encourage emotional exchange.

In her recent research in the Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale (National Linen and Hemp Mill) in Villa d’Almè, Bengolea connects the era of the Industrial Revolution with her own practice of Free Dances, which were created by famous and lesser-known choreographers between the two wars.

She also looks at the machines that spin linen threads and develops a metaphor of dancers concentrating on one single action, with machines and workers collaborating on a meditative, generative, and potentially liberating mental state induced within the performer’s body. The condition brought about by the body’s repetitive rotation can activate energies that translate into movements full of spontaneity and vitality, capable of disrupting mechanical repetition and giving way to improvisation.

For Thinking Like a Mountain, the artist has come up with a new performance to be presented on June 7 in the former twisting room of the linen and hemp mill. To bring the project to life, Bengolea collaborated with five young dancers from the Danzarea school in Mozzo (Bergamo), drawing inspiration from the mechanical, rotary movements of the machinery once used in the plant’s hemp and linen spinning departments and from Free Dances from the 1930s.

Raw linen fabrics play a central role in the costumes worn by the dancers, whose qualities vary depending on the stage of processing of the linen and hemp used.

Created in collaboration with costume designer Alberto Allegretti, the costumes are inspired by the Theyyam ritual, held annually in Kerala, India, during the harvest season, where dancers wear garments made from the fibers of pepper, cardamom, and vanilla plants.

The choreography devised by the artist unfolds through a sequence of initially mechanical actions, collective choreographies, and elements of the Free Dance repertory, while a number of house dance rhythms are also integrated into the composition. Reflecting on contemporary alienation, the work draws a parallel with the historical alienation associated with labor during the Industrial Revolution.

The performance is part of the fourth edition of ON AIR – Argentina-Italia Art Residency, a residency program created through a collaboration between GAMeC and Fundación PROA in Buenos Aires, aimed at fostering the exchange of experiences and promoting the artistic potential of both countries.

JULIUS VON BISMARCK
Landscape Painting (Mine)
June 7 – September 14, 2025
Dossena

In Dossena—home to the oldest mining complex in the Brembana Valley, where iron ore and fluorite were extracted for centuries—German artist Julius von Bismarck (Breisach am Rhein, 1983) will create his fifth landscape painting: a painting both of and within the landscape, in which the pictorial gesture dissolves the boundary between the subject depicted and the surface it is rendered on.

For this work, the artist draws inspiration from the aesthetics of engravings and mine studies that marked the work of many key figures in art history, from Albrecht Dürer to Caspar David Friedrich, and from Paul Cézanne to Paul Klee. In particular, von Bismarck references are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian landscape views, woodcuts, and copper engravings—images that sought to portray the landscape as realistically as possible.

Adopting a diametrically opposite approach, the artist intervenes on the rock walls inside the mine, creating a “reversed” trompe-l’œil: rather than hinting at three-dimensionality through tricks of perspective, he paints lines and hatchings—reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques—that flatten the view of the quarry into a two-dimensional image.

In this way, von Bismarck does not merely represent the landscape, but physically enters it, confronting its scale in an act that becomes at once measurement, struggle, conquest, and transformation. The painted marking, applied directly to the rock, becomes a monumental gesture that—though impermanent—visibly inscribes itself onto the environment. As time goes by, the image will slowly dissolve through the action of atmospheric agents.

Through this process—whereby the mountain dissolves into black lines on a white background—the artist deconstructs the tradition of landscape painting, aiming to expose its contradictions and reveal how the representation of nature has always been filtered through idealizations and anthropocentric perspectives.

Ultimately, von Bismarck’s intervention seeks to reposition the human being within nature—not as something pre-human and “other,” but as a cultural construct that evolves through history.

FRANCESCO PEDRINI
Magnitudo
June 7 – September 14, 2025
Roncobello

The project by Francesco Pedrini (Bergamo, 1973) for the community of Roncobello involves the creation of a new observation point for the night sky at Passo del Vendulo.

The choice of location was determined by a combination of historical and serendipitous factors: the Upper Brembana Valley is an area of great archeo-astronomical interest, and Passo del Vendulo is a crossroads of trails, including the one leading to the Porta delle Cornacchie. Here, in an area where it was necessary to remove red spruces that had been attacked by the bark beetle—an insect that particularly targets this type of tree by feeding on its inner bark layers—a suitable space has been created to host a new “poetic sky observatory,” as the artist defines it.

Pedrini’s work stems from a reflection on the transformation of the forest ecosystem, caused by climate change and the spread of red spruce monocultures that have facilitated the proliferation of the bark beetle, now destroying vast forest areas.

Inspired by the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, an Indian astronomical site, Magnitudo will have simple yet evocative functions and will consist of three installations: Posa is a flat area, leveled with wooden planks, that invites contemplation of the night sky and, during the day, allows the tracing of a solar analemma—a geometric figure resembling the infinity symbol that reflects the Earth’s movement around the sun over the course of a year.

The other two works are made of larch wood, typical of the area and resistant to weather: Polaris is a log tilted to about 42 degrees—the latitude of Passo del Vendulo—which directs the observer toward the Polar Star, long a guiding light for explorers and scientists; in Aerofono, a tree is transformed into a hollow structure that captures the sounds of the sky, offering an immersive listening experience.

During the summer, the works of Francesco Ferrero, Gianmarco Cugusi, and Roberto Picchi—winners of the 2024 edition of Sentieri Creativi—will also be presented in the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello. This project was born from the synergy between Bergamo per Giovani, the Municipality of Bergamo, and the Politecnico delle Arti “Donizetti-Carrara”, with GAMeC collaborating on the launch of a new residency program format. The start of the summer cycle will serve as a prelude to the announcement of the winning artists for the 2025 residency program, who will stay in Dossena and Roncobello between June and July to produce new works.

The projects by Julius von Bismarck and Francesco Pedrini, as well as the works by Francesco Ferrero, Gianmarco Cugusi, and Roberto Picchi, are staged in partnership with the municipalities of Dossena and Roncobello as part of the project Na.Tur.Arte – The Valparina Wilderness Area amid Hospitality, Art, and Nature.