This title is extracted from one of the Italian author Erri de Luca’s quote, who is involved in the fight against the building of a high speed train line linking Lyon to Torino (called “TAV”) a project highly criticized by locals mainly in the Val de Susa, Italy.
Maurienne’s mountains are marked with ambiguities, contradictions, oppositions. Nicknamed “the aluminum valley”, space is mastered and exploited there. From the numerous factories that were once scattered along the Arc river, only one is remaining, bordered by a highway –the only one in the Alps – and soon by a high speed train line that has raised opposition among the inhabitants, mainly after suspicions of corruption and pollution. Even if a few ski resorts dot the summits, the main part of the space in Maurienne stands in the uninhabitable, thus matching the romantic image of a pure and sublime nature.
At first, I’ve felt the need of a physical experience of the landscape. Being in the mountain, walking, breathing.
Somehow, it was like wandering about became the uninhabitable, something that cannot be experienced except walking, the closest to topography, immersed in the landscape.
These two aspects of the work are like two layers adding up, mixing just like a recognition survey walk through the territory, to try and know every corner.