On Monday I set out on my return visit to northeastern Italy, to take forward an art project around which I’ve been circling cautiously for a year. It has to do with making some sort of artistic response to an experience I had there at about this time last year.
Walking in a mountain area on the border between Italy and Austria I came across an outdoor museum consisting of a section of the First World War trenches and other military emplacements dating from the 1915-17 period, when the Italian and Austrian armies confronted each other in the Julian Alps. (The place is called Pal Piccolo, and you can find some photographs and maps of it if you look it up on the internet.) It is a terrifying environment in which to try to fight a war, especially when you think that the conflict was sustained through two alpine winters.
I became very engaged with the place, and interested in the contrast between the way war must have been conducted here and our conventional images of WWI, based on Flanders. I had not appreciated before just how much of our environment as mountain walkers in that area is actually shaped by the military legacy. Also, it is a very different view of the nature of the relationship between people and the mountains.
I have begun to do some drawings and paintings, but on Monday I will be going back to spend a week there, immersing myself in the place and the people of the area. Having recently acquired an iPad it ought to be possible for me to sustain contributions to this blog, and to share aspects of the journey with you.
Although it has been part of my awareness and general planning for the future for a year now, suddenly my departure is very close, and I am really beginning to focus on the opportunities and the challenges of the project. I am really rather unsure as to what will come out of it, but I’m sure it will be very interesting.