Round table with Sabine Tholen, Jean-Marc Besse and Rainer Michael Mason, moderated by Jérémie Gindre, on the occasion of the publication of the book La Frana by Sabine Tholen, published by Edizioni Periferia,

On 23 August 2017, with a deafening roar, an entire section of Piz Cengalo in the Sciora massif broke away: 3,000,000 m3 of rock and mud poured at high speed down the Bondasca Valley as far as the village of Bondo, sweeping away houses, roads and infrastructure and leaving a five-kilometre long desert of stones. The area was soon buried under almost two metres of mud and around 100 inhabitants were evacuated. For the local population, this natural disaster had sometimes dramatic consequences. Some people had to leave their homes for good and a number of houses have since been demolished.

La Frana is the culmination of an art project several years in the making in the form of an artist’s book. The natural disaster, documented by the photographs and drawings by Sabine Tholen, is complemented by contributions from specialists of the territory and the mountains, providing essential reflections on the profound transformation of the contemporary territory, the effects of the Anthropocene and the resulting climate emergency.