Transhumance is a far-reaching cultural expression of mountain cultures, which over the span of many centuries has generated trans-regional and cross-border mobility networks associated with the earliest exchanges between European peoples and cultures. The exhibition “Paths of Grass and Rock. Forms of mobile pastoralism in Europe”, co-curated by Luís Costa and Gianfranco Spitilli, addresses the broad subject of mobile pastoralism of which transhumance is a remarkable example, being conceived to be presented both inside the Gorfer Mill at the Campus Transhumance in Schnals / Senales (South Tyrol, Italy) and at the Municipal Museum of Castro Daire (Portugal).

This initiative is supported by the Tramontana project, co-financed by Creative Europe, the Higher School of Art and Design of Caldas da Rainha (Portugal) and its LiDA research center, the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and its ID+ research center, the University of Molise and its Biocult research center, and the PRIN Wildebate project – Coexistence, bio-cultural friction and pastoralism in protected areas, from the University of Teramo, the Central Institute of Cataloguing and Documentation in Rome and the Digital Itineraries project, together with the Municipality of Castro Daire (Portugal). The project is also co-financed by the General Directorate for the Arts (Portugal) and the Italian Ministry of Culture, through the Municipality of Schnals/Senales’ PNRR project for the regeneration of small cultural sites, cultural, religious and rural heritage, funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU program.

The exhibition proposes a contemporary exploration of transhumance, which is widespread throughout the European continent, through research materials – both visual and audio – coming from eight different countries (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and Albania, all partners of the Tramontana network, with the addition of Austria) and relating to numerous mountain contexts of research, from the Montemuro Massif to the Pyrenees, from the Alps to the Apennines, from the Carpathians to the Balkans. In Portugal this exhibition will be part of the “Last Route of the Transhumance” event, organized by the Municipality of Castro Daire. Transhumance is inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Cultural Heritage of Humanity as of 2019, will thus be related to a vast European connective tissue, in accordance with the auspices of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage itself, encouraging an extensive dialogue in the name of respect for cultural diversity and mutual understanding.

Curators’ biographies:

Luís Costa (Lisbon, 1968) is a PhD researcher in site-specific art at the University of Aveiro and at Escola Superior de Artes e Design (Caldas da Rainha). Since 2004 he has been working as a curator and programmer of contemporary artistic practices and as a sound and media artist. He is the coordinator of Binaural Nodar, a rural-based cultural organization that has already hosted more than 200 international sound/media artists and researchers in the Portuguese region of Viseu Dão Lafões. He is the creator of Binaural Nodar Digital Archive, a sound and audiovisual cataloguing project of the collective memory of Portuguese rural territories which is part of the European Tramontana Network. He is the author/editor of twelve books dedicated to artistic research, especially sound and media in rural contexts, and rural ethnography, including the catalogue Three Years in Nodar: Context-Specific Artistic Practices in Rural Portugal (2011), the book Tales of Sonic Displacement: SoCCoS, a sound-based artist residency network (2016), and the book Memoria Tramontana: Changes in rural Europe as seen by its inhabitants (2019). Since 2007 he has developed an intense activity of sound and media creation in rural contexts, through which he reflects on the natural, cultural and social specificities and changes of places. Of particular importance are “Sound Villages” (2007-2010); “Sound Memory of Cork” (2014-2015); “Perennial Bridges on Temporary Waters” (2018-2019), and “The Third River (2024), a sound and audiovisual artistic reflection that brought together “water cultures” of the Bisagno River (Genoa, Italy) and of the Paiva River in Portugal.

Gianfranco Spitilli (Teramo, 1975). PhD in Ethnoanthropology, he is currently a research fellow at the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education of the University of Molise, professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Communication Sciences of the University of Teramo. He carries out research in the field of visual and sound anthropology, religious ethnology, anthropology of Christianity, in Italy (Apennines, Alps), in Belgium (Wallonia and Limburg) and in Romania (Transylvania). He has created numerous sound and audiovisual documentation that has was used to create documentaries, museum installations, record productions, digital archives and portals. In 2009 he won the “Nigra Prize” for anthropological research. Among his latest publications: (with A. M. Zocchi, ed.) Images and social research. A dialogue between sociology and anthropology (2020); L’ascolto e la visione. Don Nicola Jobbi and the Central Apennines of the twentieth century (2020); (with G. D’Autilia, ed.) Sono tutta negli occhi. Sebastiana Papa photographer (1932-2002), exhibition catalogue (2023); Pandemic soundscapes. Collaborative Ethnographies and Multimodal Approaches to the Coronavirus Soundscape, EthnoAnthropology, 11 (2023); “Grass roads”. Anthropology, mobile pastoralism and knowledge, in Don E. Bettini, D. Tondini (eds.), A new renaissance for Europe: the role of research and training (2023); Sound ethnography and communication: sound as a cultural system, in C. Corsi, P. Coen (eds.), The professions of communicating: past, present, future (2023).