The magic mountain

Active between 1918 and 1990, the Balangero asbestos mine is today at the centre of an extensive decontamination project. It presents itself as a suspended territory where the still legible signs of the intense mining activity that lasted over eighty years coexist with the traces of a progressive wilderness and the reappearance, both natural and induced, of various plant and animal species. The Magic Mountain analyses the dense network of relations between man and land, a proper ecosystem extending from the quarry to the small towns on its slopes. The work brings together the oneiric imagination of those who now live near the former quarry, the process of colonisation of the contaminated land by plants and lichens, and the fascinations at the origin of the history of the use of asbestos, a mineral that has been considered magical since ancient times due to its extraordinary fireproof properties. The delicate transition phase that is currently underway contrasts a recent past marked by some of the darkest events in Italian industrial history and a future reconversion aimed at both self-sufficiency in production and the return of large areas of this mountain, inaccessible to date, to their surrounding communities.

with (in order of appearance):
Caterina Cerva Pedrin, Mario Giacomin Potachin, Marco Picca Piccon, Irene Damiano, Paul Leon Allaire, Gian Carlo Bertellino, Sergio Favero Longo, Gian Mauro Salot, Ivan Cavalli, Martina Sette, Sabrina Scolari, Mariagrazia Luiso
and with:
Roberto Chiesa, Lorenzo degli Espositi, Alessandra degli Espositi, Federica dell’Omo, Daniela Dhampiraj, Sara Ferrando, Bruna Garofoli, Fabrizio Cat Genova, Virginia Coletti Grancia, Roberto Macario, Domenica Mangialardo, Graziella Martini, Raffaele Rudi Mazzotta, Federico Picca Piccon, Renato Quercia, Rosangela Vietti Ramus, Marina Vietti Ramus, Sergio Ruo Ruich, Andrea Telesca