Unrestricted view
“Down with the Alps! Unrestricted view of the Mediterranean!” This was the battle cry of an irate Swiss youth in the early 1990s, demanding more space for an alternative society: From 1980 to 1982 Zurich – and later, other Swiss cities – were shaken to their foundations by this youth movement: Zurich burns (“Züri brennt”). The protesting youth did not, of course, want to literally flatten the mountain chain between north and soth, but to shake up the potent, intransigent symbol of Swiss national culture. In the Alpine Switzerland, an “unrestricted view of the Mediterranean” was the demand for a broadening of horizons and a shift in perspective, for greater freedom and for more alternatives. (Almost twenty years after the Zurich movement, Swiss curator Bice Curiger used the slogan as the title for a fundamental “Young Swiss Art” exhibition held at the Kunsthaus Zürich museum of art, which provided a comprehensive insight into the contemporary art scene of those times).
The mountains, as a powerful symbol of culture, as the delineation – and delimitation – of one’s horizons: South Tyrol, like Switzerland, has also been defined and challenged by the presence of the mountains. Both the Confederation and South Tyrol owe their origins not to these mountains in themselves, however, but to the routes which pass through them, to the mountain passes and link roads which lead to the Mediterranean.
For many years, South Tyrolean artist Hannes Egger has been exploring the importance of the Alps in and for his homeland, together with the link routes, distances and parallels between the mountains and the sea. In his concept for the BIVACCO project, and in transporting the Alpine bivouac to the island of San Servolo near Venice, he has laid bare the, and expanded the perspective of, the link between mountains and sea.
The bivouac – its name comes from the German term ‘Beiwache,’ which roughly translates as ‘sentinel’ – is a military and alpine emergency shelter kitted out with only the bare es sentials, the minimal form of architecture to afford people protection.
The typical alpine ‘bivouac box’ is a small tin or corrugated iron, wooden or plastic container with as many sleeping places as possible, visible from a great distance. It has a small entrance and is poorly insulated; usually there are blankets, candles, snow shovels, some emergency supplies and a log book and, more rarely, an emergency telephone, a stove or an oven. It has neither running water nor a toilet.
The bivouac which Hannes Egger hit upon after extensive research was built almost 50 years ago to provide shelter from the inclement elements and accommodation for mountaineers, rescue teams and ski tour groups at an altitude of 2,510 m. Up until the end of the 1990s, the orange bivouac box at the foot of the north face of the Hochferner was situated close to the Italian-Austrian border. This was a typical bivouac setting; generally speaking, these shelters are built on mountain passes, saddles and gullies, and there are few to be found on the mountain peaks. Bivouacs are, then, located at the sites of greatest difficulty and danger; they lie in the sites where the goal has yet to be reached and the ascent has yet to be made, between the foot and the summit of a mountain.
The bivouac from the north face of the Hochferner also houses another tale within its walls: It is named Günther Messner in memory of famous mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s brother, who died tragically on Nanga
Parbat in 1970.
The timing of the project was no arbitrary choice: 2019 is the centenary year of the Treaty of Saint Germain which assigned South Tyrol to Italy and, in doing so, demarcated the border between Italy and Austria close to the north face of the Hochferner. In the Europe of today, where borders are being raised rather than lowered, where mountains are increasingly being employed as protective ramparts and open perspectives are becoming hemmed in, the potential and the timely significance of moving the bivouac from its original residence to the sea becomes all the more evident. This exhibition project aims to discuss the bivouac as an architectural entity, but also in its implications as a retreat and as a place of reflection.
In this regard, the BIVACCO is reminiscent of a project by Polish artist Pawel Althamer in 2004 – the year Poland joined the EU: Althamer created a ‘UFO,’ a minimalist sculpture in wood and aluminium sheeting along the Warsaw-Berlin railway line, and had children run around it dressed in space suits. For a fleeting instant, passengers on the train were treated to a wholly unexpected sci-fi scenario, prompting both interludes of reflection and flights of fancy.
The orange bivouac on San Servolo, likewise, resembles a UFO: For some it triggers memories, while for others it is an unknown entity. Like Althamer’s UFO, the bivouac is a place that stimulates reflection on the importance and, above all, the crossing of borders. It appears in an unexpected setting
and creates a space for imagination and encounter.
Hannes Egger 