Artesina, Italy

How does an absurdly large pink rabbit transform a landscape?

At Check-In Architecture, we find press releases about as exciting as a trip to the dentist, necessary, sometimes informational, but painfully boring. But every once in a while, we find a “press release,” that actually releases the press. We found Gelitin’s description of their project pretty beautiful, so rather than craft our own (authors all), we decided to let Gelitin describe this mission for us:

The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbit’s body, a country dropped from the sky; ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and intestines.
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
I love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.
After almost 5 years of knitting the rabbit found its final place in the Italian alps (close to Cuneo). It waits there to be visited by you. You might even take your time or check back every now and then as the rabbit will wait for you 20 years from now on.

Monuments are meant to be permanent, but this one, has an installation time of twenty years over which this 60 meter long rabbit, like the forgotten toy of a giant baby, will slowly rot back into the landscape.
And Gelitin members say the bunny is not just for walking around. They insist that hikers ought to climb its 6 meter sides and relax on its belly.

Mission Report

Our mission lasted 9 hours. We easily reached our destination (Artesina) in 3 hours, after a short breakfast at the Autogrill. During our mission, the weather was sunny with a summertime temperature. Artesina was completely deserted. We walked 45 minutes along the mule track reaching the Pink Rabbit, and along the route we met a couple who told us which way to follow. Once on the top of the Colletto Fava, we checked the Rabbit's decay process and documented it. Then, we travelled around, looking for further information about the Rabbit. In the villages of Camponevoso and Frabosa Sottana, we collected the most information. In the afternoon we came back to Artesina, but municipal offices were closed, and we shot some interviews in the only open bar we found. We left Artesina and came back to Turin at 18.30.
Antonio Marzotto, Giuseppe Franco