Vestire i paesaggi English version

The project Vestire i paesaggi aims at improving the territory of the Adda Basin and its tangible and immaterial heritage through the creation of networks and synergies among cultural and environmental institutions (archives, libraries, museums, parks and associations).

He selected the place, engaged people and took pictures of them working in the fields, bent under the weight of hey, flopped down after the hard daily work. The archive preserves the pictures taken by Pietro Pensa: black and white snapshots, sometimes in colours, select reality, sit it to create stories, searching the past. The grandfather looked for the Ancient. He discerned it in a look, in a wrinkled face, a smell, a memory, a working tool. With his researches, the old papers, the parchments, the photographic films, the books and the pictures surveyed and recreated an atmosphere, trying with great effort to fix something that was fading away. But no archeology: Pietro Pensa was not only interested in exploring, recreating and placing everything on the shelves of archives, libraries and museums. Everything was and is contemporaneity. Stories, faces, immaginary creatures, forgotten words and objects pervade what sorrounds us. Esino Lario, the mountains, the lake, the valleys are not just a landscape to be admired and sold in postcards: they are a world made up of narrative, roads, human relationships, legends, memories, nostalgia and projects to make people live, revive and transform the territory. Reality and fiction, near and far away, past and present, traditions and modernity mix endlessly, to nurture ourselves, enrich and give sense to our lives. All this can be achieved through an archive and the establishment of strong bonds among the archive and the other institutions. The archive, the museum and the park interact to preserve old and new traces, to stir imagination and to allow to watch the world and the nature sorrounding us always in a new perspective. Researches, catalogues, restorations, pubblications, chances to learn and meet each other lead us to create new outlines that let us perceive “something different” and “more” in the reality around us. Iolanda Pensa

General activities

Vestire i paesaggi is a three-year project (2009-2012) allowing to reach important objectives and various results depending on each year objectives. The general aims of the project are:

• The enrichment of the landscape and of the history of the Adda Basin, searching for the most unknown peculiarities. Unfinished, destroyed or never carried out works (the dam producing electricity would have made a big lake out of Valsassina, the SS36 spot-non spot,…)
• The experimentation of new languages awakening different senses and sensibilities: creative workshops, works of art and of design, conferences and itineraries, moments of education and of cultural deepening, chances to meet each other and to enjoy your free time with adults and kids.
• The boosting of archives and books: issues turning into opportunities, dusty sheets nurturing cultural, environmental and recreational activities.
• The creation and the widening of a network among public and private institutions, voluntary associations, archives, libraries, ecomuseums and museums, in order to get an integrated and coordinated communication of the territory.

Specific activities

Each year the project focuses on a series of activities related to three different themes:

• First year - Roads and communication networks: Stories and tracks of merchants, passerbies and bandits.
• Second year - The “cavra sbàgiola”: ethnography and folklore.
• Third year - The environmental and cultural transformations through landscapes, parks, archives, libraries and museums.

Promoters, archivists, artists, partners and volunteers work hard to achieve the following objectives:

• Three archival and bibliographical kits with a report on the history and on the working method.
• Three works of art: during 2010 the group Warburghiana, from documents selected and analysed by archivists and researchers, provides the installation “Concerto sinottico”.
• A work of design: the artist and architect Antonio Scarponi and Conceptual Devices provide TOI, the communication material characterised by a coordinated graphic on templates downloadable from internet. Beside being useful for Vestire i paesaggi, the templates can be freely used and customized by everyone.
• Art hours at home: in partnership with the project 1 h art, to abolish the niche built up by contemporary art, becoming a world by its own, and to turn back to think about audience involvement outside canonic places.
• Three creative and relational workshops for adults and kids: during 2010 the Associazione Aforisma provides a workshop of child psychomotility.
• Three training courses.
• Three itineraries and conferences.

Promoters

The project "Vestire il Paesaggio" is promoted by Ecomuseo delle Grigne, is coordinated by Associazione Amici del Museo delle Grigne Onlus in cooperation with the partners Associazione di ricerche storiche Giuseppe Bovara, Comune di Brivio, Comune di Primaluna, Comune di Taceno and 1 h art.

Fondazione Cariplo Milano, Provincia di Lecco and Fondo Pietro Pensa with Fondazione della Provincia di Lecco Onlus give their contribution and support the project.

Biblioteca Comunale di Esino Lario, Comune di Esino Lario, Comunità Montana della Valsassina, Valvarrone, Val d'Esino e Riviera, Ecomuseo del Distretto dei Monti e dei Laghi Briantei, Lions Club Riviera del Lario and Parco Regionale della Grigna Settentrionale support and are involved in the project.

The project is conceived by Iolanda Pensa and Cristina Perillo in cooperation with all the partners and is coordinated by Cristina Perillo.

Internal links

You can find the works in progress of the project Vestire i paesaggi at the following link: Vestire i paesaggi: Storia del progetto English version.