Description

This is a promenade that develops outside the village of Imèr, a town located in the southern point of Val di Primiero. The characteristic of this track, which is not particularly interesting if seen from a purely hiking point of view, is that it is passing through the beautiful and interesting artworks called Street Barch Art, made by the local artists Gianluigi Zeni and Nicola Degiampietro.

This walk starts in the sport area of Imèr, proceeding south-west on the asphalt road beside the basketball court. The trail starts by going through the area called Giàre (tr. gravel), a terrain which was rich of swamps and has in the past been converted to pastures and productive area. While walking you can see a lot of small barns, used for hay storage, but nowadays mostly for woodcutting. The road turns left and you get in front of a fishing center, where they raise all the smaller fishes that will later populate the lakes and rivers of Primiero. 

Right after, we get to a road juncture. Our hike goes left and back east but not before having a look at the first example of Street Barch Art (a giant fly on the southern side of the barn), just some 50 m south of the juncture. We then continue on the road going north-east, meeting two other art-pieces (a kid locked up in the wall and three fishes recalling the Pale di San Martino mountains) on the way, until a few meters before the main roundabout, where we take the underpass to cross the main road and the bridge there from. 

We take the new cycle path going along the Cismón river, not forgetting to turn around in the fields to have a look at another Street Barch (two hands/people hiking), until the new botanical garden Val Noàna, presenting some examples of the variety of the local flora. Overlooking the garden and the panorama, a nice wooden terrace is worth a short break. 

From here we take the path going up (the steepest one, not the main road!) and proceed for some few hundred meters uphill, until the next juncture; we continue uphill on the road going to Monte Vedèrna, but soon turn left to enter the forest (the path is marked with a 1 meter tall wooden pole at its beginning). We slightly descend into the cute Cappuccetto Rosso forest (tr. Little Red Riding Hood) and cross it reaching its main path and following it to the east. At the end of the flat area, follow the path going down for some meters towards the stream of Val Noàna and a newly built bridge named as Pònt dele Corde (tr. the bridge made with ropes). Before its renovation, the bridge was built with ropes. We take the Val Noàna road on the left, towards Imèr. After half a kilometer, the trail continues by following the pedestrian route along the river and going back to the roundabout. The sculpture in the middle of the roundabout is an otter, which is the symbol of the Primiero valley.

Going back to the starting point, we can see two more examples of the Street Barch Art, with a “Shining” portrait and a pitcher plant that we can see 100 m walking east from the start.

STREET BARCH

by the authors N. Degiampietro and G. Zeni

The term Street Barch comes by merging two words: street, often associated with the well known “street art” and barchi (ed: pronounced bàrki), which in Primiero‘ local dialect translates into a sort of “small barns made of planks, shelters for tools, rural sheds”. These two words form a definition that recalls both the past and the present, by combining, in a single concept, two subjects that are apparently very distant from each other.

The Street Barch project has developed spontaneously in 2016 from the creativity of the artists Nicola Degiampietro and Gianluigi Zeni, as part of the contemporary art exhibition Frel: la purificazione della materia, a Contemporary art event set hosted in the town of Cavalese.
After a successful pilot project, thanks also to the artistic-cultural sensitivity of the Municipality of Imèr, other works were created. At the moment, a total of six artworks exist.

Yet, it is a work in progress that evolves and continues today in the rural area around the village of ​​Imer.

The topics covered are many and not necessarily obvious. The work varies from concepts related to restlessness and mystery, to the investigation of what is typical and touristic. However, the main theme is Nature, with its forms and its persistent concepts, which moves the investigation defining the background of all these works. Nature is also a physical protagonist. In fact, the continuous dialogue between man and nature is perpetuated in the succession of the seasons, while also following the territory and its continuous metamorphosis.

Furthermore, the works are immersed in the Nature. Executed with simple techniques by leveraging on the abrasion of the old gray wood that brings to light its original color. Also, traces in the structure, if done correctly, have a strong visual impact. In some cases, some parts are more prominent by darkening the wood itself by burning it or by simply using colors.
Even the natural change of the wood is considered as part of the game, an inexorable consequence of the passage of time and seasons, bringing, again, back to the concept of Nature.