Biennale Gherdëina 8

We want to tell you about this person who is a tree, who is a lake, who is a stone, who is you and who is me. About this person who is a star and who is young because they is old; who speaks the language of minerals, sings the song of rivers and howls at dawn, because they are also dog. We want to tell you about their dreams, griefs and desires. About their body, their hand that gives and their hand that takes, their eyes that hear and tongue that paints; how their roots walk and their fur travels.

We want to tell you about Persones Persons, the Biennale Gherdëina ∞.

Dialoguing with the Alpine valleys, mountains and skies of Ladinia, in the Dolomites, and celebrating the multitude of living forms—human, animal, vegetal, mineral, mycological persons—that populate them. The stories of Persones Persons are told in many manners. Through exhibitions, encounters, performances, songs, storytelling, hugs, books and other streams of exchange. And in many languages: English and Ladinia’s idioms: Ladin, Italian, German.

Biennale Gherdeina ∞, entitled Persones Persons, moves along two lines:
One considers forms of personhood in wildlife and landscapes, legal and other, asking how artistic expressions can contribute to this recognition of Earth’s rights and to the dilution of divides.
The other attends to the ancient and future memories of pathways of people, animals, plants and matter across systems of migration, seasonal displacement and transhumance, in the region and resonating landscapes. To how they shape and constitute one another in a continuous process of mutual influence and attunement.

Lucia Pietroiusti is a curator working at the intersection of art, ecology and systems. She is the founder of General Ecology at Serpentine, London. Current and upcoming projects include the international tour of Sun & Sea by Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte (2019-2022) the exhibition and performance programme, Being Mothers at E-Werk Luckenwalde (Sept 2021-May 2022) and Back to Earth at Serpentine, London. Recent publications include More-than-Human (co-editor), 2020.

Filipa Ramos is a writer and lecturer based in London. Her research focuses on how art and culture address ecology and in particular on the modes in which contemporary art fosters interspecies relationships across humans, non-humans and machines. She curator of Art Basel Film and founder of Vdrome.

Pietroiusti and Ramos have worked collaboratively since 2018 on the long-term research and festival project on interspecies consciousness, The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish.