The project is carried out thanks to the support of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture as part of the 11th edition of the Italian Council (2022); promoted and produced by Lo scuola dell’arte, with the contribution of nctm and l’arte. The work will become part of the MAN collection in Nuoro.

MAN presents the exhibition The Magic Mountain by Micol Roubini, centered on a work that takes the form of a video installation of environmental dimensions and which will occupy the rooms on the first floor of the museum.

The project The Magic Mountain was born from the meeting of Micol Roubini with the Corio and Balangero area.

Always interested in the memorial traces of places and people, and involved in long-term projects in the area, the artist recounts the phase post industrial analyzing the dense network of relationships that, with the context, entertain the inhabitants.

We are, in fact, in Northern Italy, a few tens of kilometers from Turin: a densely populated area. Yet a suspended atmosphere dominates in the towns of Corio and Balangero and in the adjacent disused asbestos quarry.

Active from 1918 to 1990, Amiantifera was the largest open-air quarry in Europe. Today the area is at the center of an extensive reclamation project; the still legible signs of extractive activity coexist with the traces of a progressive growing wild, with the reappearance, both natural and induced, of various plant and animal species.

In the video installation The Magic Mountain different levels are intertwined including the process of colonization of contaminated land by plants and lichens, laboratory research on asbestos, the suggestions at the origin of the very history of the use of the mineral, considered since ancient times magical for its extraordinary fire-retardant properties.

The ongoing transition phase pits a recent past marked by some of the most complex events in Italian industrial history against a future reconversion aimed at returning large areas of the mountain, currently inaccessible, to the communities that surround it.

Among Roubini’s research trajectories, one concerned the dreamlike imagination of the inhabitants of the area, mostly former mine workers or their family members; a way to investigate their internal experience with respect to the complexity of the situation.

The magic mountain it is a video installation, 4 channels, 2023, super 16mm transferred to 2K, sound, 24’30”.

She was born in 1982 in Milan, where she lives and works. She graduated from the Brera Academy and the Univeristät der Künste in Berlin. Since 2021 he has been teaching New Languages ​​of Visual Communication at CFP Bauer, Milan. His research investigates the balance between man and territory, between cultural systems and landscape morphology, between history, migrations and individual memories.

He has exhibited at Museo Casa Testori (2021), Premio Matteo Oliviero (2017), Hotel Charleroi (2013). He carried out the project Clandestine deeds for movable lands (Palazzo Magnani Foundation 2021). He has participated in video exhibitions at Villa Medici (2021), Pavilion (Poznan 2021), LightCone (Paris 2017), Scotland’s Center for Photography (2012).

He has conducted masterclasses (Locarno Film Festival 2022) and participated in residencies including Fondazione Pistoletto (2017), Scottish Sculpture Workshop (2013). His movie The road to the mountains (2019), in competition at Cinema du Réel and at other European festivals, it won the Corso Salani Award at the Trieste Film Festival 2020.

She is a curator and critic of contemporary art, for years involved in public projects and social practices. She is the curator of solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and public projects. He collaborates with Italian and international artistic and cultural institutions, including: Pac, Milan; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan; MAXXI, Rome; Venice Biennale, Venice; Royal Academy, London; Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen.

Among the projects curated: Chiaralice Rizzi and Alessandro Laita, The Memory of the Air, winning project of the Italian Council, Marubi Museum, Scutari, Albania, 2021-2022; Emilio Fantin, Awakenings, winning project of the Italian Council, Mambo Bologna, Palazzo Barolo Turin, Baruchello Foundation Rome, University of Chicago; Maria Papadimitriou, Why look at animals AGRIMIKA’, Greek Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale; restoration of the Teatro Continuo by Alberto Burri, Milan, 2015.
Since 2011 she has been artistic director of nctm e l’arte.

film script : Micol Roubini

photography : Davide Maldi

help with photography and camera : Tiziano Doria

editing and color correction : Davide Maldi, Micol Roubini

direct sound : Giovanni Corona

audio editing and mixing : Giancarlo Rutigliano

executive producer : The Altauro

production assistants : Francesca Bennett, Giulio Squarci

technical materials : L’Altauro, Labbash, Warshad Film, Panalight, Nova Rollfilm

film development and printing : Augustus Color

filmed in Kodak super16mm film

with (in order of appearance) :

Caterina Cerva Pedrin, Mario Giacomin Potachin, Marco Picca Piccon, Irene Damiano, Paul Leon Allaire, Gian Carlo Bertellino, Sergio Favero Longo, Gian Mauro Salot, Ivan Cavalli, Martina Sette, Sabrina Scolari, Mariagrazia Luiso

and with :

Roberto Chiesa, Lorenzo degli Espositi, Alessandra degli Espositi, Federica dell’Omo, Daniela Dhampiraj, Sara Ferrando, Bruna Garofoli, Fabrizio Cat Genova, Virginia Coletti Grancia, Roberto Macario, Domenica Mangialardo, Graziella Martini, Raffaele Rudi Mazzotta, Federico Picca Piccon, Renato Quercia, Rosangela Vietti Ramus, Marina Vietti Ramus, Sergio Ruo Ruich, Andrea Telesca

Thank you : RSA srl, University of Turin, Mining Ecomuseum of Balangero Corio and Cudine, Aib Boschivi, Nuova Cava Ceretta, Associazione Ariele, Pro loco Corio, Association of Alta Val Malone paths, Okta Film, Kodak, Osteria di Campagna Cudine, Agriturismo Bastià , Giacu d’Nota

Chiara Allari, Cristina Bagnasco, Claudio Baima Rughet, Luciana Baima Rughet, Guido Battaglia, Roberto Bellezza, Massimo Bergamini, Guido Blanchard, Pierdomenico Bonino, Carol Brentisci, Paola Carini, Franco Carnevale, Arianna Cecconi, Marina Ballo Charmet, Roberta Ciambrone, Marilena Colombaro , Alessandro Costa, Augusta Franco Cavalli, Luciano Dionisi, Bice Fubini, Alfredo Gamba, Antonio Ghione, Samira Guadagnuolo, Maurizio Iacocella, Corrado Magnani, Aldo Mairano, Giuliana Marangoni, Dario Mirabelli, Valentina Molinar Min, Riccardo Lazzarini, Federica Nardese, Elena Nascimbene , Giovanni Poma, Paola Pregnolato, Elisa Pugliaro, Juan Rolando, Ruo Rui, Giancarlo Suino, Giorgio Taccon, Francesco Turci, Enrico Tuvo, Elisa Pugliaro, Gianluigi Soldi, Benedetto Terracini, Piero Zanini, the participants of the Libro Bar di Corio.