Rebuilt Interview with Micol Roubini by
Jacopo Turini, Unruly Natures Journal
Images: Micol Roubini
︎
October 1, 2026
La Montagna Magica is a multimedia project by the artist Micol Roubini, set in the former asbestos quarry of Balangero, near Turin. Once the largest quarry in Western Europe, it operated from the early 1920s until it closed in 1991.
The project includes a four‑channel video installation (2023), a 67‑minute film shot on film stock (2025), and a book published by NERO Editions (2024), which gathers critical, essayistic, and poetic texts on asbestos and on the history of the site.
At the centre of the work are video testimonies of dreams, collected from people living in the area and connected to the mine and to asbestos. These accounts are edited together with images of the abandoned quarry, of the landscape under remediation as it appears today, and of the laboratory where asbestos filaments are analysed. Roubini approaches the dreams as expressions of the place’s collective unconscious and of the slow violence the site continues to exert on its inhabitants.
Video 1: Excerpt from the film La montagna magica, 68’, 2025.
(UN): La montagna magica originates in Balangero, an asbestos quarry that closed in 1991 and is still undergoing remediation. What you describe is a doubled landscape: a void where the mountain was, and a second mountain made of its toxic debris. How did you come across this site, and what led you to choose it as the place where you would develop your work?
Micol Roubini: When I began working on La montagna magica, I was researching territories that had been profoundly modified by human intervention from a strictly morphological perspective: diverted river courses, dams, infrastructures of various kinds, quarries, mines. What interested me were territories where the reasons that had led to this modification had somehow lapsed, leaving them in a state of abandonment, with an evident process of rewilding underway.
I read about the Balangero mine, which is very close to Turin, and I was deeply struck, since it is hard to imagine that an asbestos mine could be located so near such an important urban centre. Some research I did later, and conversations with people I happened to meet, told me that when this open-pit quarry was operating, if you knew exactly which direction to look from a tall building in Turin, you could see a perpetual cloud of white dust, asbestos dust. This is a significant proximity, but a proximity accompanied by a vuoto mnemonico, a memorial void. Today Balangero is a little-known territory, especially when compared to the nearby Casale Monferrato, with its well-documented history of asbestos contamination.
The memory of this place exists at the strictly physical, mining level; at the level of the populations of lichens, plants, animals returning to inhabit this territory, and the way they interface with one another. Among all these factors, there is also our presence, the human presence, which for me stands on the same plane as all the others.
The site is officially off-limits today and accessible only through the agency managing the remediation. Yet it continues to be very much lived by the local community, informally. Precisely because industrial activity has ceased, the territory has flourished again. Forests have returned, animal populations have recovered, and various species of birds, deer, and even wolves have reappeared. I remember, on a Sunday, seeing many people from the area simply walking and enjoying the first days of spring in this natural amphitheatre, which has become extraordinarily scenic. The invisibility of the asbestos-dust threat, together with the rootedness in the territory, the unconventional presence of those who inhabit it, the void of memory surrounding such an important industrial past, all these signs appeared to me as the conditions under which the work had to be made.
Micol Roubini: When I began working on La montagna magica, I was researching territories that had been profoundly modified by human intervention from a strictly morphological perspective: diverted river courses, dams, infrastructures of various kinds, quarries, mines. What interested me were territories where the reasons that had led to this modification had somehow lapsed, leaving them in a state of abandonment, with an evident process of rewilding underway.
I read about the Balangero mine, which is very close to Turin, and I was deeply struck, since it is hard to imagine that an asbestos mine could be located so near such an important urban centre. Some research I did later, and conversations with people I happened to meet, told me that when this open-pit quarry was operating, if you knew exactly which direction to look from a tall building in Turin, you could see a perpetual cloud of white dust, asbestos dust. This is a significant proximity, but a proximity accompanied by a vuoto mnemonico, a memorial void. Today Balangero is a little-known territory, especially when compared to the nearby Casale Monferrato, with its well-documented history of asbestos contamination.
What I found in Balangero was an ecosystem. On the one hand, there is a mountain with a major wound, a mountain that no longer exists, because it is now a void, the void of the excavation, which remains practically unchanged since 1991, when the last volata, the last blast, was set off. Alongside this absent mountain, a second mountain has risen, made of toxic debris.
The memory of this place exists at the strictly physical, mining level; at the level of the populations of lichens, plants, animals returning to inhabit this territory, and the way they interface with one another. Among all these factors, there is also our presence, the human presence, which for me stands on the same plane as all the others.
The site is officially off-limits today and accessible only through the agency managing the remediation. Yet it continues to be very much lived by the local community, informally. Precisely because industrial activity has ceased, the territory has flourished again. Forests have returned, animal populations have recovered, and various species of birds, deer, and even wolves have reappeared. I remember, on a Sunday, seeing many people from the area simply walking and enjoying the first days of spring in this natural amphitheatre, which has become extraordinarily scenic. The invisibility of the asbestos-dust threat, together with the rootedness in the territory, the unconventional presence of those who inhabit it, the void of memory surrounding such an important industrial past, all these signs appeared to me as the conditions under which the work had to be made.
Video 2: Excerpt from the film La montagna magica, 68’, 2025.
(UN): One of the most distinctive aspects of the work is your decision to collect the dreams of those who live around the former quarry. Why dreams? What did this method give you access to that direct testimony could not?
Micol Roubini: Around the time I began working on La montagna magica, by pure coincidence, I read an extraordinary book by Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams. Beradt was a Jewish intellectual living in Germany during the years of Hitler’s rise to power. She began collecting the dreams of people very different from one another in social, political, economic, and cultural backgrounds, doing so in secret, because it was forbidden by the regime. She noticed that, as the number of dreams grew, a form of collective dreaming was emerging beyond their individual aspects, one that could anticipate the trajectory of that period's society. A collective repression made itself felt, a trauma shared by the population, which somehow foreshadowed what would happen shortly afterwards. The text was smuggled out of Germany and published only in the 1960s, thanks in part to the intervention of Hannah Arendt.
This appeared to me immediately as a very interesting practice, one that anticipates what is now carried out in various contexts under the name of Social Dreaming.
There is a novel that is also very precious to me, Bašta, pepeo (Garden, Ashes) by Danilo Kiš. At a certain point, Kiš says that our way of thinking is conditioned by the territories we inhabit, that the form of thought of those who live on the plains is different from that of those who live in mountainous terrain. So, in the end, the question was this: what is the conditioning today of those whose shared landscape is an asbestos mountain-quarry?
The method proved valuable because it offered a different way of recounting trauma. It moves beyond many preconceptions and leaves room for the account of a strong bond with this mine, a bond that is not only negative but also reflects an important cultural patrimony for the people who inhabit this territory. I wanted to avoid the sensationalism of journalistic exposés, which inevitably accompanies the common imagination of asbestos. The dream method sidesteps that. It is also a precious instrument of inquiry at such a temporal distance, because most of those who live there today have some connection to the mine: they are grandchildren or children of those who worked in the mine, or relatives of former workers. But there are also many people who came to live in these villages more recently, and this method opened up to them as well, bringing them together with the others through the simple fact of inhabiting this territory.
Micol Roubini: Around the time I began working on La montagna magica, by pure coincidence, I read an extraordinary book by Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams. Beradt was a Jewish intellectual living in Germany during the years of Hitler’s rise to power. She began collecting the dreams of people very different from one another in social, political, economic, and cultural backgrounds, doing so in secret, because it was forbidden by the regime. She noticed that, as the number of dreams grew, a form of collective dreaming was emerging beyond their individual aspects, one that could anticipate the trajectory of that period's society. A collective repression made itself felt, a trauma shared by the population, which somehow foreshadowed what would happen shortly afterwards. The text was smuggled out of Germany and published only in the 1960s, thanks in part to the intervention of Hannah Arendt.
This appeared to me immediately as a very interesting practice, one that anticipates what is now carried out in various contexts under the name of Social Dreaming.
So I asked myself a question: the mine has been closed for almost forty years, but the threat of asbestos remains, since asbestos-related illnesses can emerge as much as forty years after exposure. Are there, in the collective unconscious of those who inhabit these territories today, traces of this shared history?
There is a novel that is also very precious to me, Bašta, pepeo (Garden, Ashes) by Danilo Kiš. At a certain point, Kiš says that our way of thinking is conditioned by the territories we inhabit, that the form of thought of those who live on the plains is different from that of those who live in mountainous terrain. So, in the end, the question was this: what is the conditioning today of those whose shared landscape is an asbestos mountain-quarry?
The method proved valuable because it offered a different way of recounting trauma. It moves beyond many preconceptions and leaves room for the account of a strong bond with this mine, a bond that is not only negative but also reflects an important cultural patrimony for the people who inhabit this territory. I wanted to avoid the sensationalism of journalistic exposés, which inevitably accompanies the common imagination of asbestos. The dream method sidesteps that. It is also a precious instrument of inquiry at such a temporal distance, because most of those who live there today have some connection to the mine: they are grandchildren or children of those who worked in the mine, or relatives of former workers. But there are also many people who came to live in these villages more recently, and this method opened up to them as well, bringing them together with the others through the simple fact of inhabiting this territory.
Figure 1: Research material for the project, a photobook containing images of the terraces at the
Balangero asbestos mine during the post-war period, courtesy of the artist.
(UN): Alongside the dreams, you bring in a much older history of asbestos, one that goes back to ancient Greece. You restage a nineteenth-century ritual from Valtellina, in which animals and people, wrapped in asbestos cloth, were placed near pyres to convince villagers to mine the mineral. What does it mean to restage this today, with the inhabitants of the place dressing a young man in a white suit?
Micol Roubini: La montagna magica is informed by a long period of historical research, which includes L'epopea dell'amianto by Franco Carnevale, work at the State Archives in Turin, and many literary sources. What is particularly interesting to me about asbestos is that it is a material whose capacity to provoke wonder - a wonder it provoked in human beings until quite recently - has now been lost. The cohabitation of humans and asbestos goes back to ancient Greece. Asbestos was an extremely workable material, and people began weaving it because of its fire-resistant properties. Saints and kings were wrapped in it, and I wanted to bring this dimension of magical fascination into my work.
I read about a practice carried out in the nineteenth century, particularly in the Valtellina, intended to convince people to mine asbestos. Animals or people would be wrapped in large cloths, placed near great pyres, and the population would be summoned to witness the burning. From these fires, the people and animals emerged alive, to the great astonishment of those present, who then rubbed their hands together, believing they were about to embark on an extremely lucrative enterprise: the extraction of such a portentous mineral. This anecdote seemed particularly significant to me because it encapsulates the dimension of human greed.
There is also a kind of sacredness that has become associated with this mineral since antiquity. From the beginning, I decided to stage an analogous scene in a more performative, non-historical form: bringing a group of people, the inhabitants of the place, to dress a young man in a white suit (not made of asbestos!), who is then offered up in this kind of contemporary propitiatory rite. We filmed the scene.
Micol Roubini: La montagna magica is informed by a long period of historical research, which includes L'epopea dell'amianto by Franco Carnevale, work at the State Archives in Turin, and many literary sources. What is particularly interesting to me about asbestos is that it is a material whose capacity to provoke wonder - a wonder it provoked in human beings until quite recently - has now been lost. The cohabitation of humans and asbestos goes back to ancient Greece. Asbestos was an extremely workable material, and people began weaving it because of its fire-resistant properties. Saints and kings were wrapped in it, and I wanted to bring this dimension of magical fascination into my work.
I read about a practice carried out in the nineteenth century, particularly in the Valtellina, intended to convince people to mine asbestos. Animals or people would be wrapped in large cloths, placed near great pyres, and the population would be summoned to witness the burning. From these fires, the people and animals emerged alive, to the great astonishment of those present, who then rubbed their hands together, believing they were about to embark on an extremely lucrative enterprise: the extraction of such a portentous mineral. This anecdote seemed particularly significant to me because it encapsulates the dimension of human greed.
There is also a kind of sacredness that has become associated with this mineral since antiquity. From the beginning, I decided to stage an analogous scene in a more performative, non-historical form: bringing a group of people, the inhabitants of the place, to dress a young man in a white suit (not made of asbestos!), who is then offered up in this kind of contemporary propitiatory rite. We filmed the scene.
Figure 2: Filming inside the quarry, Dop Davide Maldi and assistant Tiziano Doria filming the lichenologist Sergio Favero Longo, June 2023.
Figure 3: Hands handling a rock containing asbestos, film still, La montagna magica, 2025, courtesy of the artist.
(UN): The site contains incompatible timescales: seventy years of extraction, forty years of bonifica, the centuries required for vegetation to re-establish itself, and the geological time of the mountain. The lichen you describe is the figure in which these different scales collide.
Micol Roubini: This is a work that speaks of different temporalities. Human temporality, taking just the extractive aspect and leaving aside the older history of asbestos, lasted seventy years. There have now been forty years of bonifica, and who knows how much longer it will take to attempt to restore (though “restore” is a delicate word) this place, because in fact the process is not entirely reversible. This is a human timescale of two or three generations. But human time sits uneasily alongside geological time, the time over which this mountain was formed, and the time required for vegetation to re-establish itself in a territory so profoundly altered.
A trace of these various temporal scales is embodied by a lichen, one of the few known living organisms capable of metabolising asbestos and rendering it inert, which a group of lichenologists discovered in the excavation area at Balangero. The great question, of course, is this: these lichen colonies form spontaneously, but lichens grow at an extremely slow rate by human standards, only a few centimetres per century. So, paradoxically, they are useless within a remediation process, which requires much faster timescales and measurable results.
Looking at a territory not from our human point of view, but from the point of view of organisms slowly attempting to recolonise it, raises a whole series of questions about the way we interact with the territories we inhabit.
This should raise a series of questions before any industrial intervention is undertaken within a territory, particularly when excavation is considered. What is needed is a condition of greater attention and a deeper listening to the world around us.
The extractive model of Balangero is the model of the entire twentieth century. Today, it continues in Europe in a more discreet form than it once did, but it is still being carried forward in many territories across Asia, Africa, South America. It is a model centred on the idea of exponential, continuous growth: of unstoppable progress, a wild search for new resources, and little consideration for the residues it leaves behind. I think it is an economic model that will inevitably collapse, because it is incompatible with life over the long term.
Micol Roubini: This is a work that speaks of different temporalities. Human temporality, taking just the extractive aspect and leaving aside the older history of asbestos, lasted seventy years. There have now been forty years of bonifica, and who knows how much longer it will take to attempt to restore (though “restore” is a delicate word) this place, because in fact the process is not entirely reversible. This is a human timescale of two or three generations. But human time sits uneasily alongside geological time, the time over which this mountain was formed, and the time required for vegetation to re-establish itself in a territory so profoundly altered.
A trace of these various temporal scales is embodied by a lichen, one of the few known living organisms capable of metabolising asbestos and rendering it inert, which a group of lichenologists discovered in the excavation area at Balangero. The great question, of course, is this: these lichen colonies form spontaneously, but lichens grow at an extremely slow rate by human standards, only a few centimetres per century. So, paradoxically, they are useless within a remediation process, which requires much faster timescales and measurable results.
Looking at a territory not from our human point of view, but from the point of view of organisms slowly attempting to recolonise it, raises a whole series of questions about the way we interact with the territories we inhabit.
Our presence, our destructive action, is very rapid, but in the end we are irrelevant. Our memory is also very volatile, while the wounds we inflict on a territory require centuries to heal.
This should raise a series of questions before any industrial intervention is undertaken within a territory, particularly when excavation is considered. What is needed is a condition of greater attention and a deeper listening to the world around us.
The extractive model of Balangero is the model of the entire twentieth century. Today, it continues in Europe in a more discreet form than it once did, but it is still being carried forward in many territories across Asia, Africa, South America. It is a model centred on the idea of exponential, continuous growth: of unstoppable progress, a wild search for new resources, and little consideration for the residues it leaves behind. I think it is an economic model that will inevitably collapse, because it is incompatible with life over the long term.
Figure 4: Film still, La montagna magica, 2025, courtesy of the artist.
(UN): La montagna magica exists in two forms: a four-channel installation in which the dreams and images never align in the same way, and a single-channel film shot on celluloid and divided into chapters, that echo Dante's gironi. What does each form let you do that the other cannot?
Micol Roubini: This project was conceived from the outset as one that would produce different formal outcomes, because each form would recount a different aspect of the research. The installation consists of four multi-channel projections on loop, in which the visitor experiences a continuous and never-identical superimposition of narratives, as the images and the dreams never align in exactly the same way across the four projections. The filmic form has a more straightforward circulation: a single projection with a more linear narrative.
Both recount this ecosystem through the dreams of the people who inhabit it, attempting to create a suspended narrative, set in a present without precise dating, a present that does not evolve, as in Kafka's Castle, and that incorporates legends, archival material, night dreams, as well as scientific research and studies on the air and water within the mine.
In the film, the narration is also carried forward by the thread of the burning: the boy fleeing through the woods to escape the symbolic pyre, with a voiceover that ties all these elements together. The film is divided into chapters that pay homage to Dante’s gironi. The first is La selva, the forest, and they lead the viewer ever deeper into the mine and into the dust that settles on things, and within people’s lungs.
Alongside this, there is a publication that brings together the more collaborative dimension of the research, with contributions from art critics, anthropologists, scholars, and occupational physicians who, starting from the work, expand into a broader discussion of the cohabitation of human beings with the territory, with its toxicities and difficulties. Some contributions are more scientific, others more poetic, but all of them, in the end, reflect on the complexity of these relationships.
Micol Roubini: This project was conceived from the outset as one that would produce different formal outcomes, because each form would recount a different aspect of the research. The installation consists of four multi-channel projections on loop, in which the visitor experiences a continuous and never-identical superimposition of narratives, as the images and the dreams never align in exactly the same way across the four projections. The filmic form has a more straightforward circulation: a single projection with a more linear narrative.
Both recount this ecosystem through the dreams of the people who inhabit it, attempting to create a suspended narrative, set in a present without precise dating, a present that does not evolve, as in Kafka's Castle, and that incorporates legends, archival material, night dreams, as well as scientific research and studies on the air and water within the mine.
The work was shot on celluloid, a deliberate choice on my part, something I had wanted to do for some time, but which married particularly well with this project, because it heightened this sensation of suspended time.
In the film, the narration is also carried forward by the thread of the burning: the boy fleeing through the woods to escape the symbolic pyre, with a voiceover that ties all these elements together. The film is divided into chapters that pay homage to Dante’s gironi. The first is La selva, the forest, and they lead the viewer ever deeper into the mine and into the dust that settles on things, and within people’s lungs.
Alongside this, there is a publication that brings together the more collaborative dimension of the research, with contributions from art critics, anthropologists, scholars, and occupational physicians who, starting from the work, expand into a broader discussion of the cohabitation of human beings with the territory, with its toxicities and difficulties. Some contributions are more scientific, others more poetic, but all of them, in the end, reflect on the complexity of these relationships.
Figure 5 & Figure 6: La montagna magica, book, 12 x 16,5 cm, 388 pages, EN / IT, Nero Editions, 2024.The project La montagna magica is realised with the support of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity within the Italian Ministry of Culture as part of the 11th edition of the Italian Council (2022), promoted and produced by Lo schermo dell’arte, with the contribution of NCTM e l’arte, curated by Gabi Scardi.
Project partners: Talbot Rice Gallery, PAV Parco Arte Vivente, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MMSU Rijeka, Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia.
About the authors:
Micol Roubini is an artist and filmmaker. Her research investigates the relationships between man and landscape, the changing balance with which, through language, culture, an economic system or social structures, the very idea of space, geographical area or the borders of a state gradually take shape. The processes by which history and oral memories intersect, coming to shape the morphology of the territory. Her first feature film The way to the mountains, presented at the 41st Cinema du Réel and screened at several other European festivals, won the Corso Salani Prize in 2020 at the Trieste Film festival. In 2022, she won the 11th edition of the Italian Council prize with the project La montagna magica / The Magic Mountain. Developed in collaboration with Lo Schermo dell'arte, the work involves Talbot Rice Gallery, PAV, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, MMSU Rijeka, and Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia. The film of the same name, made in 2025, won the award for cinematographic innovation at the Bellaria Film Festival. She is co-founder of the production company L’Altauro, and author / scriptwriter of film projects, including The young observant, by Davide Maldi presented at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival and at Doc Fortnight at Moma in New York.
Jacopo Turini earned his PhD at University College Cork with the support of a Government of Ireland IRC scholarship. His doctoral thesis offered a geo-literary analysis of identity narratives and spatial representations in contemporary Italian literature from Alpine border regions. His research spans the intersections of literature, geography, and spatial theory, with a broader interest in the environmental humanities – particularly the geological world, extractivism, and subterranean imaginaries. In 2025, he co-edited a special issue of Italian Studies on the Anthropocene. He is currently a visiting researcher at Trinity College Dublin.
Header image: The Balangero asbestos mine, courtesy R.S.A. S.r.l., Società a capitale pubblico per il risanamento ambientale dell’ex miniera di Balangero e Corio (Fondo Vernoli).
References
Charlotte Beradt, C. (2020). Il terzo Reich dei sogni, Meltemi Editore.
Cecconi, A. (2021). I sogni vengono da fuori. Un’etnografia della notte, Editpress.
Carnevale, F. (2020). L’epopea dell’Amianto. Una mortale pandemia di lunga durata, Polistampa.
Ferrari, F. (1965). Viaggio nelle miniere, Canesi, primo reportage storico sulle miniere in Italia. In P. Levi, (1975). Il sistema periodico, Einaudi.
Calvino I. (1954). La fabbrica nella montagna, articolo pubblicato nell’edizione torinese de “L’Unità” del 28 febbraio 1954.
Kiš, D. (1986). Giardino Cenere, Adelphi.
Further reading
Roubini, Micol. La Montagna Magica, Roma, NERO, 2024.
Charlotte Beradt, C. (2020). Il terzo Reich dei sogni, Meltemi Editore.
Cecconi, A. (2021). I sogni vengono da fuori. Un’etnografia della notte, Editpress.
Carnevale, F. (2020). L’epopea dell’Amianto. Una mortale pandemia di lunga durata, Polistampa.
Ferrari, F. (1965). Viaggio nelle miniere, Canesi, primo reportage storico sulle miniere in Italia. In P. Levi, (1975). Il sistema periodico, Einaudi.
Calvino I. (1954). La fabbrica nella montagna, articolo pubblicato nell’edizione torinese de “L’Unità” del 28 febbraio 1954.
Kiš, D. (1986). Giardino Cenere, Adelphi.
Further reading
Roubini, Micol. La Montagna Magica, Roma, NERO, 2024.