10 days of contemporary art in South Tyrol: Bolzano Art Weeks is back

Ten days of contemporary art in South Tyrol. From September 29 to October 8, the third edition of BAW - Bolzano Art Weeks is scheduled, a collective event created with the aim of giving a shared space, both physical and temporal, to South Tyrol’s multifaceted contemporary art scene. BAW covers the entire city of Bolzano (and beyond) with the intent to involve a wide and diverse audience and to animate with an artistic spirit areas of the city usually unrelated to this dimension: avoiding hierarchies between center and periphery and inspired by a polycentric vision that enhances the realities off the beaten track. As always, everyday places such as schools, bars, hotels, stores, restaurants, but also disused commercial establishments will play a prominent role this year. Lesser-known but now the focus of many reflections will be involved, such as Don Bosco and Europa Novacella, the Areale ferroviario-since last year one of the most creative spaces “opened up” by the event in the general ferment of East Bolzano-and South Bolzano, the city’s squares and green spaces, the Maria Heim architectural complex, and the gardens and historic settings of the Laurin, Mondschein and Hörtenberg Castle hotels.

Also in the 2023 edition, BAW counts the participation of more than 100 partners including Museion, Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation, Ar/Ge Kunst, Faculty of Design and Arts - Free University of Bolzano, VBB- Vereinigte Bühnen Bozen, Trevi Center and Teßmann Provincial Library, Südtiroler Künstlerbund, Artists’ Association, Lungomare and Foto Forum, private spaces of associations, galleries and individual citizens and artist studios open to the public only on the occasion of BAW.

For the first time, the event La Lunga Notte dei Musei di Bolzano, which involves 11 institutions, will take place on Oct. 6 right on the occasion of and within the BAW calendar, which this year also coincides with AMACI’s Nineteenth Day of the Contemporary with multiple initiatives adhered to in the historic center. There is no shortage of important anniversaries such as the 20th anniversary of Lungomare, celebrated with a two-day event of talks, book presentations, actions and performances with a mix of international guests such as Martino Gamper, Cecilia Canziani, Anna Colin, Marzia Migliora, Luigi Coppola, Wissal Houbabi and many others.

Almost all local institutions have decided to present their projects in the time frame drawn by the review: from the openings of major exhibitions such as HOPE, the third and final chapter of the long-term research project TECHNO HUMANITIES at Museion curated by Bart van der Heide & Leonie Radine in collaboration with DeForrest Brown Jr. and by Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare with David Lamelas. I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT. Part II curated by Andrea Viliani with Eva Brioschi, to site-specific installations such as the monumental METABOLICA (Moby Dick) by Thomas Feuerstein co-produced by Museion and NOI in the historic Carroponte hall of the NOI Techpark and the special project The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man by Margherita Moscardini realized in collaboration with the Bolzano-based Ar/ge Kunst on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at the gallery and Gian Marco Casini Gallery in Livorno for the environments of the Parkhotel Laurin. Other interchange collaborations between local realities and guests are also fruitful, such as the performative device Second Skin by Hannes Egger curated by Lottozero of Prato and the exhibition WOMEN’S BODY / ALL YOU CAN FUCK with Letizia Battaglia’s famous shots on the theme of the female body between freedom and humiliation curated by Crumb Gallery of Florence hosted by BAW23 at Castel Hörtenberg.

Then there will be book presentations on the dual aspect of the play_ground theme such as Landscape with(out) Locus curated by Eva Leitolf and Giulia Cordin of the Faculty of Design and Arts at Unibz in collaboration with LUMEN Museum and NERO Editions and La stagione fatata. Childhood in Italian Contemporary Art by Saverio Verini published by Castelvecchi and presented in conversation with Denis Isaia, Elisa Del Prete and Stefano Riba at WAAG. Casa della Pesa will also be the venue for the first appointment of the BAW23 calendar curated by Weigh Station with an installment of the international format Creative Mornings that once a month unites more than 200 cities in 67 countries around the world in a creative breakfast dedicated, this September, to the theme of SIMPLICITY.

There will be no shortage of small realities all to be discovered in the tucked-away corners of the capital, such as Archimod, very young projects like those of the Smarmellata, Borlottee and /dzublate/ collectives to neighborhood festivals like the BAW23 STREETFEST(A ) in the Dodiciville street closed for the occasion. Completing the program are tours also led by well-known personalities such as Luca Rossi or discovering neighborhoods and their architecture through theater and dance with the Bolzanism Museum to build also through social play archives of shared knowledge by the community such as that of the “Piazze Dei Saperi” by the Phantom Collective. Given the theme, there will be no shortage of initiatives dedicated to children and families.

BAW’s map, as usual, crosses city boundaries: reaching an unspoiled valley of San Martino in Val Badia thanks to BAW ON TOUR, this year dedicated to SMACH. Val dl’Ert, (Valley of Art), a public art park in nature, winner of one of the special mentions at the National Landscape Award 2022, and to Eppan, with the initiatives of Eau&Gaz Residency in the evocative spaces of Castel Gandegg.

Inspired by the play_ground concept was also the BAW23 Call For Artists held during the summer and entrusted to the judgment of the technical-scientific committee composed of Leonie Radine (MUSEION, curator), Angelika Burtscher (Co-Founder and Co-Artistic-Director of Lungomare), Nitzan Cohen (Dean Faculty of Design and Arts Free University of Bozen), Valerio Dehò (Independent Curator), Rudolf Frey (Artistic Director Vereinigte Bühnen Bozen VBB), Kathrin Oberrauch (Independent Curator), Tommaso Tisot (Collector), Chiara Caliceti (Tourism Marketing and Communication Expert), Lisa Trockner and Alexander Zoeggeler (Director and President of Südtiroler Künstlerbund SKB).

In its role as jury, the committee decreed the victory and funding of 5 original works to be exhibited in the 5 zones during the 10-day event, each a dedicated tour destination: the large sandbox with references to sand play therapy titled Sanding memory by Masatoshi Noguchi hosted by alma9 in East Bolzano; the project born from a critical inspection of a pet store by Brazilian-born photographer Elisa Cappellari, titled Play on , play on! at the Teßmann Library in north Bolzano; the interactive work with linked live performance - Pino by Maria Walcher - inspired by the throne of Sicily’s oldest shoe shiner installed in the centrally located Palais Campofranco; the Russian duo Dmitrii Khramov & Mariia Khramova, with falling stones as Rain’s moments of eternity that open a portal to another dimension at NOI Techpark; Caterina Nebl & Anna Maconi with the action Bon Ton for the finissage in West Bolzano in the out-of-time spaces of Maria Heim. It will be their surreal character the “Miss Bo” who will close this edition with a set table: a shared and inclusive space where everyone can sit down and get involved. An effective metaphor to tell BAW, a space as big as and bigger than a city, where subjects from the art world and the public give life to an extraordinary party where everyone brings something and everyone receives more than they brought.

10 days of contemporary art in South Tyrol: Bolzano Art Weeks is back

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