The cross-disciplinary aspect, such as art and skiing, makes Atla(s)now a project of relational and community art, in which the object and the action become a place for discussion, where the art-making process, the discovery of the other, and the shared experience take centre stage. [download pdf][ read more ]
For this reason, all the training activities related to skiing and the mountain, along with their educational function, represent a playground on which to enable performative actions and shared experiences, in which the body and the gesture play an important role in the construction of thought and of relations between men and territories.
Therefore, the training programmes for the ski instructors and the construction of an Atla(s)now ski rental in Oukameiden, a ski resort just 70km from Marrakech, have raised new awareness and needs, such as the creation of a professional local association, able to manage independently and professionally business otherwise destined to be absorbed by and lost to institutional bureaucracy.
In this light, having succedeed in obtaining a Visa enabling Id Ali Brahim, a mountain guide and ski instructor from Morocco, to experience a residency programme in Italy, was particularly meaningful for the project.
Inviting a ski instructor and guide from Morocco is a fundamentals step in our project, as it represents a real connecting bridge, an arch stretching over two continents, which reinforces Atla(s)now to emphasize a key aspect of visual arts: generating thought by enriching and expanding all aspects linked to the function and definition of the role of art and the artist as well as all independent projects and the places where they unfold.
In addition to the fundamental aspects of technical training and cultural exchange, together with Brahim we started off a process which aims to combine the mountains of the Mediterranean, ideally shifting the borders, through a series of ski and mountaineering residencies and performances, to build the main bridge between the Toubkal (the highest peak south of the Mediterranean) and the Mont Blanc (the highest peak north of the Mediterrenean).
It is interesting to note how the residence in Italy and the contents of Atla(s)now have spurred in Brahim the desire to create an artwork to be left on the Italian mountains. Being himself an artful craftsman, on a stone of its mountains he engraved a universal ecological message, symbolized by 3 elements, the Juniper tree typical of his land and that he strongly defends, the symbol of Amazigh identity and a bird. He then chose a place in the ski resort of Ovindoli, Italy, an isolated tree in the snow, whereunder he wanted to install his artwork, which also extends on the Italian territory the Spread Out Museum that Atla(s)now has already begun to build on the mountains of Morocco.
It has been stunning to see how the Italian experienced mountaineers and professionals showed extraordinary sensitivity and availability, thanks to which they have built relationships that reinforce the idea that leads us to imagine the mountains as a bridge and an arch stretching between peoples.
In the same context, it fits in with the performative itinerant project "the Djellabà trip", which Angelo Bellobono already begun in Oukameiden, Morocco, and that - as he was skiing in Abruzzo, Italy - saw him wear his Djellabà, conceived as an artwork and created with the Moroccan seamstresses in the laboratory Tadert titburine. A journey, the one of the Djellabà, that aims to disseminate the mountains and Berber identity associated with it, along the mountain ranges of the Mediterranean.
