The ArtePollino project aims at increasing social involvement through the simple act of walking, in a slow and collective ‘immersion’ in natural and man-made elements.

A collective experience ‘in movement’, halfway through reality, imagination and memory: the “fragility” of art, the instability of words and the strength of gestures will try to cautiously penetrate into the rich melting-pot of cultures that have inhabited and still inhabit these still undiscovered lands, making them come to light.

The Southern part of Basilicata, with the Pollino National Park and the city of Matera, will be the backdrop of several actions that will bring the richness of these places to light, so that impromptu stories can deposit on the rocky soil of imagination and its intricate roots of memories. Everything will be in continuous experimentation, as an ‘open work’ and work in progress.

The project’s purpose is to rediscover the potential of this region, and access collective imagination and memory of places.

The project aims at reinterpreting the region, from a relational and interactive point of view, where imagination, socialisation, knowledge-sharing and exchange become the means to transform our way to experience the world.

The walk will also include the festive and collective dance made by Jérôme Bel, involving both amateurs and professionals from the area and creating temporary communities with a focus on the relationship between corporeality and landscape, using the scene as a social and political platform.

The Albanian Artists from Art House, and the Italian ones, selected and supported by Claudia Losi and Adrian Paci, with the cooperation of the anthropologist Meschiari Matteo will try, during a workshop/residence, to redefine the representation space through the act of walking across the lands where the Arbëreshë communities have lived for five centuries.

The artistic performance, in the form of a collective dinner, made by Lucy and Jorge Orta, will involve the attendants and the producers of the Pollino, in a festive and meditative experience about food, which is a primary element and the symbol of social identity.

The writers Elvira Dones and Melania Mazzucco, together with Marco Cazzato, Stefano Faravelli and “Il Circolo dei Lettori” of Turin, a public space entirely dedicated to reading, will listen and narrate stories about the region and the landscape, along the walk.