Walking with Senses
March 24–June 5, 2016
Andreas Angelidakis / Kristina Buch / Nanna Debois Buhl / Michael Fliri / Tue Greenfort / Numen/For Use / Manuel Pelmuş and Alexandra Pirici / Angelo Plessas / Alvaro Urbano
Initiated by Municipality of Merano and Merano Tourist Office
Organisation Merano Arte
Art & Nature is an annual cultural project that takes place in South Tyrol, Italy, in the city of Merano and surrounding villages of Naturno, Scena, and Tirolo, aimed at fostering the dialogue between artistic production and nature during the spring season.
Walking with Senses, the second edition of Art & Nature, will take place between March 24 and June 5, 2016, and is curated by BAU. BAU invited international artists, performers, architects, designers, and dancers to dialogue with the urbannatural landscapes of the region and to propose new ways of discovering the territory as a continuum, without there being any dualistic divisions between nature and culture, city and countryside, street and path, local and foreigner, human and animal, herbs and herds, day and night.
The invited artists have created a series of nine specially-commissioned projects in which art becomes a form of engaging in multisensorious experiences that permeate and activate the various senses of our bodies. Visitors are invited to discover other forms of being, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and seeing the world.
Art & Nature 2016 invites visitors to traverse the huge Tube Meran, suspended between the trees by the collective Numen/For Use; to stand on Andreas Angelidakis’s Blue Wave, or to Listen to Nature on a polished granite stone created by Tue Greenfort. In It’s normal that reality happens. (these games will fall apart), Kristina Buch invites us to play an unknown game in a gamefield confined by marble stones. We’ll follow My Boy, with such Boots, we may Hope to Travel Far, by Alvaro Urbano, a cryptogram of concrete runes that lead us into a new discovery of the landscape. Nanna Debois Buhl explores, in a wallpaper and wall publication/artists’ book published by Humboldt Books, the unique presence of the palm tree in Merano’s landscape via Trajectories of the Trachycarpus Fortunei. Moving bodies are encountered in Manuel Pelmuş and Alexandra Pirici’s project, where five performers relate to the spaces of the Palais Mamming Museum by enacting and embodying objects and materials from the museum’s collection (May 10–14). Or in Michael Fliri’s performance Returning from Places I have never been II (April 22) at the Wandelhalle, in which the artist’s body undergoes different stages of transformation into the fantastic and futuristic. These initiatives are accompanied by the positive energies of Extropic Optimisms 2, Angelo Plessas’s neon talisman inspired by the landscape, local iconographies and familiarized symbols of internet culture.
Most artworks are located in public spaces and are freely accessible during the entire duration of the initiative. The whole initiative is accompanied by a program of talks, walks, and performances.
About BAU
BAU is an initiative for artistic production located in South Tyrol, Italy, founded in 2014 by Simone Mair, Lisa Mazza, and Filipa Ramos. BAU invites artists, curators, and researchers to meet and collaborate with local producers through the development of artistic projects that promote their mutual identities and interests. Participating artists so far have been Åbäke, Tamás Kaszás and future projects include collaborations with Emma Smith and Fernando García-Dory in 2016/2017.
Art & Nature 2016 Walking with Senses is part of the Merano Spring Festival. It is initiated by the Municipality of Merano and the Tourist Office Merano and realized in partnership with the Tourist Offices of Naturno, Scena and Tirolo as well as the support of Alperia.
The accompanying publication and the overall graphic identity of the project were done by An Endless Supply with Nicolas Burrows.