Brave New Alps
(RE)MOVE
Brave New Alps in collaboration with the
EURAC-Institute for regional development and location management
Opening: Wednesday, April 9th at 6.30 PM
Exhibition: 10.04. - 06.06.2008
Open Monday to Friday, 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Curators: Annelie Bortolotti and Letizia Ragaglia
Curatorial in german and italian
If you hear mention of traffic problems in the Alps, your first thoughts are probably about noise and air pollution, but you might also think about public protests and motorway blockades. The artistic duo, Brave New Alps, have tackled the problem of heavy traffic on the alpine transit routes with an art installation which involves the active participation of the populace and is based on hard evidence. A traffic counter on Drusus Bridge logs the number of vehicles passing the EURAC building. People leaving the centre of Bozen/Bolzano in the direction of Viale Druso/Drususallee – by car or preferably on foot – will notice from some distance away the numbers displayed digitally on the tower, by the upper row of windows. The noise created by the traffic is transmitted in real time to the inside of the EURAC tower and is graphically rendered in a video installation. On the square in front of the tower there is a ‘green oasis’, an ironic vision of the future to counterbalance the traffic noise, where soundproof headsets and face masks are used to create a virtual island of peace, hermetically sealed from the traffic all around. It remains to be seen what a sustainable development along these lines would really look like.