Like a Mountain / Like a Mall: How Institutions Think within their Environments

This research project investigates the role and potential of cultural infrastructure in peripheral and rural areas, taking into consideration current political debates around both ‘new regionalisms’ and the Anthropocene/Capitalocene narrative.
Having ar/ge kunst – Kunstverein of Bolzano as its central case study, the research is situated within the specificity of South Tyrol (Süd Tirol/Alto Adige) in Italy, a border region embodying a multiplicity of conditions that, through the lenses of culture, language, geography, history and economics, can help conceive of a curatorial and institutional practice within the extremes of the present political, ecological and migration situation.
The juxtaposition of the two texts addressed in the research title, ‘Thinking like a Mountain’ (Aldo Leopold, 1919) and ‘Thinking Like a Mall’ (Steven Vogel, 2015), constructs a ‘narrative device’ that contributes to the definition of a multifaceted and productive working framework for investigating the notion of ‘environment’ in its connotations at the intersection of culture, nature and techno-politics.

Emanuele Guidi is a writer, curator and researcher based in Berlin.
Guidi is PhD candidate in Practice in Curating at the University of Reading & Zurich University of the Arts with a research titled “Like a Mountain / Like a Mall, How Institutions think within their Environment”. He teaches both Methodologies for Art & Ecology and Museology at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan and Rome).
From 2013 and 2022 he was artistic director at ar/ge kunst, Kunstverein of Bolzano (Italy) where he carried on a program of commissions and productions, exploring the mutual relationship between visual art and publishing, architecture, live arts and theory. At ar/ge kunst he curated solo shows by, a.o. Mohamed Bourouissa, Ho Tzu Nyen, Jumana Manna, Slavs and Tatars, Otobong Nkanga.
Further recent curated projects include: hostileenvironments.eu (online platform and symposium, 2020-2021), Silver Rights, Elena Mazzi (Södertäljie Konsthal, Sweden 2021), Shadow Writings, Lorenzo Sandoval (Centro Párraga, Murcia, 2020).
Among his edited publications: Silver Rights, (Archive Books, 2021, with E. Mazzi), Image Diplomacy, Vladislav Shapovalov (Mousse, 2020, with A. Siclodi); Spaces of Anticipation (Oncurating Journal, 2018, with L. Sandoval); The Variational Status (Humboldt Books, 2017 with R. Giacconi); Rehearsing Collectivity – Choreography Beyond Dance (Argobooks, 2012, with E. Basteri, E. Ricci); Urban Makers – Parallel Narratives of Grassroots Practices and Tensions (Bbooks, 2008).

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dorothee Richter