Summer Semester, March — June 2023
Curators: Gerhard Glüher, Waltraud Kofler Engl, Gaia Piccarolo

With the kind support of the Architekturstiftung Südtirol

Cultural landscapes are the result of a dynamic process of use and development of the natural environment through human activity and the consequence of spatial-geographical, socio-economic and cultural action, which in modern times is increasingly controlled by political power. The lecture series and the excursion of the deal with both historical and contemporary cultural landscapes and their immanent change as an essential feature. As repositories of memory and cultural heritage, cultural landscapes engage in a dialogue between past, present and future.

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Programm / Programma

29.03.2023 18.00—20.00  IT UNIBZ, F0.03, 2 CFP

Geografia e cultura del paesaggio alpino. Lineamenti generali e aspetti particolari, con riferimenti all’Alto Adige

Fabrizio Bartaletti

Fabrizio Bartaletti, già Professore ordinario di Geografia presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Genova e Presidente dei Corsi di laurea triennale e magistrale in Scienze geografiche, è autore di 13 volumi, una curatela e più di 140 pubblicazioni principali fra contributi a volumi italiani e stranieri, articoli su riviste e comunicazioni a congressi nazionali e internazionali. Si è occupato soprattutto di geografia delle Alpi, turismo alpino, città e aree metropolitane, consumo di suolo, toponimi (specialmente nelle regioni alpine), del pensiero geografico e del quadro politico-amministrativo dell’Italia (comuni, regioni, macroregioni). Nel 2004 è stato chiamato dal Presidente dell’Istat a far parte della Commissione “Metodologie per la classificazione del territorio”.

12.04.2023 18.00–20.00  IT, UNIBZ, F0.01 – 2 CFP

Geografie della memoria. I paesaggi fragili

Antonella Tarpino

Antonella Tarpino è storica e saggista. Tra i suoi libri: Geografie della memoria. Case, rovine, oggetti quotidiani (Einaudi 2008); Spaesati. Luoghi dell’Italia in abbandono tra memoria e futuro (Einaudi 2012, Premio Bagutta 2013); Il paesaggio fragile. L’Italia vista dai margini (Einaudi 2016, premio internazionale The Bridge Book Award 2017 per la saggistica italiana) Memoria imperfetta. La Comunità Olivetti e il mondo nuovo (Einaudi 2020). E Il libro della memoria. Dimore, stanze, oggetti. Dove abitano i ricordi (a c. di) Il Saggiatore 2022. E’ vicepresidente della Fondazione Nuto Revelli.

19.04.2023 18.00–20.00 ONLINE – 2 CFP

Paesaggi politici del fascismo. Continuità e rotture

Roberta Biasillo

Roberta Biasillo è assistant professor in storia politica presso l’Università di Utrecht nei Paesi Bassi. Ha conseguito un dottorato di ricerca in Storia dell’Europa presso l’Università di Bari ed  è una storica dell’ambiente. È stata Max Weber Fellow allo European University Institute di Firenze. In passato ha svolto attività di ricerca presso l’Environmental Humanities Laboratory del KTH Royal Institute of Technology di Stoccolma, il Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society di Monaco di Baviera e la Sezione Studi e Ricerce dell’Istituto Nazionale di Previdenza Sociale a Roma. I suoi interessi di ricerca sono la questione forestale e aree marginali nell’Italia liberale e la storia ambientale del colonialismo italiano, con un focus sulla Libia. Ha recentemente pubblicato (con Marco Armiero e Wilko Graf von Hardenberg) La natura del Duce. Una storia ambientale del fascismo (Einaudi 2022) e ha una monografia sulle paludi pontine dall'unità all’avvento del fascismo in fase di pubblicazione.

17.05.2023 18.00–20.00 UNIBZ, F0.01 – 2 CFP

Kulturlandschaften in Südtirol. Zwischen Nostalgie und Wandel

Peter Kasal

Peter Kasal ist in Neumarkt geboren, studierte Agrarwissenschaften an der Boku in Wien und absolvierte die Staatsprüfung in Bologna. Nach seiner Tätigkeit als Freiberufler und im Unterricht hat er seit 2008 die Funktion des Direktors des Amtes für Landschaftsplanung in der Abteilung Natur, Landschaft und Raumentwicklung der Südtiroler Landesverwaltung. In dessen Zuständigkeit fallen die Erarbeitung der Landschaftspläne der Südtiroler Gemeinden, das Landschaftsleitbild als übergeordnetes strategisches Planungsinstrument, die gesetzlich vorgesehenen landschaftsrechtlichen Genehmigungen und die Natur- und Umweltbildung.

25.05.2023 18.00–20.00 DE/IT, UNIBZ, F0.01 – 2 BFC/CFP

Scritto nel paesaggio. Luoghi, tracce, memorie della Prima Guerra Mondiale nelle Dolomiti di Sesto / In die Landschaft eingeschrieben. Orte, Spuren, Erinnerungen. Der Erste Weltkrieg in den Sextener Dolomiten

Waltraud Kofler Engl, Gianluca Fondriest, Gaia Piccarolo

Waltraud Kofler Engl studied art history and history at the Universities of Innsbruck and Florence and received her doctorate (Dr. phil) in 1986 with a thesis on medieval mural painting in Tyrol. From 1986 to 2018, since 1995 in a leading position, she worked for the conservation of architectural and artistic heritage in South Tyrol. Since 2018 she is head of the Platform for Cultural Heritage and Cultural Production at the Faculty of Design and Art at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. Her publications and research focus on the history of art, architecture and gardens with special reference to the South Tyrolean context. She also conducts research in the theory and practice of monument conservation, preservation, heritage education and cultural mediation, as well as on discordant heritage, the inconvenient cultural legacy of fascism and the militarisation of the landscape. She was head of the research project "Written in the Landscape. Places, traces and memories of the First World War in the Sexten Dolomites" and, together with Elisabetta Rattalino, is curator of the exhibition on the project. She is a member of ICOMOS Germany and the Working Group for the Theory and Teaching of Monument Conservation.

Gaia Piccarolo is an architect and architectural historian. She received her PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from the Politecnico di Torino (Turin) in 2010 and has been a researcher at the Cultural Heritage and Cultural Production Platform of the Faculty of Design and Arts (unibz) from 2020 to 2024. She teaches landscape history at the Politecnico di Milano and is a member of the editorial board of the magazine ‘Lotus International’. She curated various exhibitions and has published numerous essays on contemporary architecture, urbanism and landscape design, with particular reference to the circulation of ideas and models between Europe and the Americas, the disciplinary encroachments between architecture, art and landscape design in the contemporary debate, heritage processes and discursive constructions on heritage.

Gianluca Fondriest is an archaeologist and museum educator. After a Bachelor's degree in Cultural Heritage and a Master's degree in Archaeology (Trento, Groningen), he optained a Master's degree in Advanced Studies in Museum Education (Rome). After graduation he started working in the field of professional archaeology, carrying out survey missions of building structures related to World War I in Trentino and South Tyrol, emergency archaeological excavations (from prehistory to modern times), surveys, 2D and 3D documentation. Since 2015 he has worked as a museum educator for the Soprintendenza per i Beni Culturali della Provincia Autonoma di Trento, ufficio beni archeologici, and for the Castello del Buonconsiglio. In recent years, he has curated several exhibitions on archaeological and artistic themes in Trentino. His current research focuses on the identification, gps surveying, mapping and three-dimensional documentation of evidence from the war in the Dolomite region.

10.06.2023 09:00–17:00  DE,  0 BFC

Geführte Exkursion in die Bergbaulandschaft Ridnaun/Schneeberg

Armin Torggler, Volkmar Mair

Armin Torggler wurde 1975 in Bozen geboren. 1994–2006 Studium der Ur- und Frühgeschichte sowie der Mittelalter- und Neuzeitarchäologie und der Geschichte an der Universität Innsbruck. Von 2001 bis 2003 Mitarbeit an Ausstellungsprojekten auf Schloss Runkelstein. Von 2004 bis 2007 Koordinator für das Schloss Runkelstein und von 2007 bis 2016 Koordinator der Stiftung Bozner Schlösser für die Schlösser Runkelstein und Maretsch. 2016 bis 2018 wissenschaftlicher Leiter der Stiftung Bozner Schlösser. Seit 2018 wissenschaftlicher Kurator des Südtiroler Landesmuseums für Bergbau. Schwerpunkte der Forschungs- und Publikationstätigkeit: Burgenarchäologie, Bekleidungsgeschichte, Wüstungsforschung und Geschichte der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Tirol im Mittelalter und der frühen Neuzeit, Geschichte des Bergbaus in Tirol.

Volkmar Mair Jahrgang 1967. Von 1986 – 1991 Studium am Institut für Mineralogie und Petrographie der Universität Innsbruck mit Abschluss zum Mag. Rer. Nat. mit dem Thema: „Andesitische und basaltische Gänge im Ortlergebiet“. Anschließend Doktoratsstudium zur Geologie, Geochemie und Tektonik von Intrusionen und deren Kontaktgesteine im Ortlergebiet. Von Mai 1991 bis April 1998 Assistent am obgenannten Institut. Danach Assistent am Institut für Geologie in Innsbruck. Vom 1. April 1999 bis 31 Mai 2011 Geologe am Amt für Geologie und Baustoffprüfung der Autonomen Provinz Bozen. Ab 1. Juni 2011 Direktor des obgenannten Amtes. Zahlreiche Publikationen, geologische Karten, Ausstellungen und Projekte zur Mineralogie, Petrologie, Geologie, Gefahrenzonenplanung und Permafrost im Tiroler Raum.

The final event of the seminar series "Transforming Cultural Landscapes: Natures, Stories, Memories," curated by the Platform Cultural Heritage and Cultural Production as part of the Studium Generale in the summer semester of 2023, comprises an excursion to the mining landscape of Ridanna/Monteneve (Ridnaun/Schneeberg) in the company of two exceptional guides: archaeologist Armin Torggler, scientific curator of the South Tyrol Mining Museum, and geologist Volkmar Mair, director of the Geological and Material Testing Office of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen.

We gather early in the morning at the entrance of the Mining Museum. Already at the ticket office, signs of mining exploitation are visible: here, storage buildings and transport systems have completely shaped the alpine landscape. However, the actual infrastructure of the mine is hidden from our eyes and consists of 150 kilometers of tunnels carved into the mountain, where miners have spent exhausting hours for centuries - the first evidence dates back to 1200 - extracting silver, lead, zinc, and many other minerals from the rock until its definitive closure in 1985.

After an initial introduction by our guides to the location where we find ourselves - in the complex system of mines spanning the Passiria Valley/Passeiertal, Monteneve/Schneeberg, and the Ridanna Valley/Ridnauntal - and to the extraction and transport techniques that have shaped the landscape, we board the bus that will take us from Masseria/Meiern to the entrance of the Poschhaus tunnel (at an altitude of 2,000 meters). We traverse this first tunnel on a train, advancing into the mountain for about 3.5 kilometers, and then begin our walk through the tunnels of Poschhaus (the excavation gallery from the 1970s) and Karl (dating back to the 17th century), equipped with rubber boots for the semi-flooded sections and helmets with torches to find our way in the darkness of the tunnels. With the help of our guides, we learn to distinguish the construction systems of the different sections of the tunnels. Over time, specially treated Swiss stone pine has proven to be an optimal material for creating even complex support structures for the tunnels, while concrete has quickly succumbed to erosion phenomena.

During the approximately three hours in which we venture into the tunnels, overcoming some uneven terrain, we also learn to distinguish the smooth walls of the meticulously hand-dug tunnels, often subsequently enlarged to make the miners' work more efficient, from the irregular walls produced by more recent excavation techniques such as gunpowder or dynamite. In disbelief, we admire maps and cross-sections that reveal the complexity of the tunnel system we find ourselves in. We begin to associate the colors and formations of the rocks around us with the presence of certain minerals, and we discover how mineral veins and their specific geometries have shaped the form of this underground city over time.

Once we emerge from the mine, we once again enjoy the landscape, which now opens up to the partially snow-covered horizons of the surrounding mountain ranges. The second phase of the excursion begins, crossing the beautiful Lago di Moso/Mosersee and the Passiria Valley/Passeiertal, culminating in the mining village of San Martino di Monteneve/St. Martin in Schneeberg, where Armin Torggler provides us with a summary of the historical, political, and economic aspects of the mining events in the region from prehistory to the recent closure.

The Monteneve Pass/Schneebergscharte is still impassable despite the advanced season, so we decide to retrace our steps. Along the return route, with the expert eye of Volkmar Mair reading directly in the stones the traces of their origins and biographical events, we admire the sinuous scars engraved in the mountain by the tracks used for mineral transport, the water pools, and the mounds of peat deposited downstream, where small carnivorous flowers have found their habitat.