“From May 31 to September 1, 2024, with opening days on Friday May 31 and Saturday June 1, 2024, in Ortisei and within the unique setting of the Dolomites and Val Gardena, The Parliament of Marmots, the 9th edition of the Biennale Gherdëina, curated by Lorenzo Giusti with Marta Papini as associate curator, will open to the public. The Parliament of Marmots is inspired by the Kingdom of Fanes, one of the most fascinating Ladin myths of the Dolomites, which tells of the breaking of a pact established between animals and humans. This orally transmitted legend shares some key figures with Mediterranean culture and speaks of transformations, celebrating wild nature, the cycles of life, and the intimate and profound relationship between all species. In this perspective, the mountains and the Dolomites — remnants of gigantic coral reefs that surfaced 250 million years ago — transform from a barrier into a passage, a meeting point, and thus a place of encounter and contamination.” — Biennale Gherdëina

“According to anthropologist Anna Tsing, the ability to create worlds is not a prerogative of humans; hence it is necessary to turn to ways of world-making or modes of existence beyond the human,” explains curator Lorenzo Giusti. “This does not mean adopting a post-human perspective — where the human disappears — but opening up to the telling of ‘more-than-human’ stories, in which humans lose their centrality, in the awareness that no organism can become itself without the assistance of other species. In trying to compose a possible vision of these worlds, Biennale Gherdëina 9 presents a hybrid mosaic of artistic proposals, opening up the possibility of cultural and political reconciliation between the Alps and the Mediterranean, between origins and perspectives.”  

Images courtesy Biennale Gherdëina.