Curatorial perspective

Stories from the Edge is an itinerant and participatory project based on the dialogue between subjects who conceive art as a critical tool and as a mean to create new meanings and new ways of interpreting the world.

The theme of hyper-identity as projected by mass tourism on resorts along the Adriatic coastline ​of the Gulf of Trieste​ and surroundings is analysed here through a plural and comparative method, based on the participation of artists and local communities. ​The osmizza is taken as a model of conviviality and self-production.

The form and content of the ​final ​exhibitions closing the project in Italy (Trieste, April 2016)​ and​ Austria (Graz​, June 2016)​ are defined along the ​route, according to an approach that privilege​s​ the process instead of the output (in terms of production of objects)​. Nayari Castillo, Kate Howlett-​Jones and Marina Sartori play a key role in the project, ​driving the research - as well as the camper - on the edge of our intellectual curiosity, being the collector of all the suggestion and contributions they meet on the road and disseminating traces of friendship along the way.

Curatorial perspective 2

The second trip of Stories from the Edge should have taken place in September. We decided to postpone it because of the situation that was taking shape at the nearby borders during the summer. The refugee crisis was defined by OECD in those days as "a humanitarian crisis unprecedented, with an appalling and unacceptable human cost". It happened after a summer in which arrivals to the European Union, by sea and by land, increased steeply as well as the related shipwrecks, deaths, accidents and inhumane conditions. The image of Aylan Kurdi – who had escaped from Kobane with his family only to wash up, lifeless, on the shore of Bodrum – was one of the most horrific culmination of a horror that had a profound impact.

We decided to wait. For one thing, for practical reasons: to cross the borders between Croatia and Slovenia, as well as those with Austria, would have taken longer than we planned. The "Balkan route", once used for smuggling, became the way for thousands and thousands of women, men and children arriving mainly from Afghanistan and Syria. When Hungary closed its borders, a river of people flooded into Croatia to cross Slovenia, aiming for Austria and northern Europe. Furthermore, over those days in mid-September it was proving difficult to obtain permissions from the local authorities to occupy public space with our osmizza.

However, the decision to postpone the trip was mainly connected to the need to elaborate what was happening and to understand how our project should continue in light of this. In fact, it would be impossible for us to carry on with Stories from the Edge as we had conceived it at the beginning, because the refugee ​crisis was rising issues - shared also by the project - in a way and with an urgency impossible to ignore.

Firstly, the sea and the land themselves, where Stories from the Edge takes place, changed their appearance in our common imagination: from places of holiday, rest, amusement and travel (whose identities are more or less artificial - this is what we wanted to investigate) to places of safety or, conversely, of death for all of those people escaping war, persecution or impossible living conditions. What emerged was a mutation in the image of place, an identity displacement in the collective consciousness, which is what we had expected to observe but in another direction.

Secondly, the aim of the project to create "traces of friendship" between countries by a continuous exchange between international borders seems to collide with the position of those countries who reacted to the situation by erecting walls or expressing the will of closure in contrast with the principles of solidarity and "union" that Europe professes to have. For this reason, it seems important to highlight that knowledge does not sprout in abstract space but arises and grows through communication and cultural exchanges, by means of translation, diffusion and contamination of ideas. And also the ideas are less abstract, less immaterial than how one can imagine: these are embedded in the texts, objects, tools and images, and in all the things made and carried by people. Ideas and knowledge are thus also inextricably connected to people and only through movements, encounters and exchanges can cross-pollination take place.

​Thinking about knowledge and identity through the filter-concept of ‘migration’ raises many questions: What exactly is it that is transferred during the process of migration - ideas, objects, skills, problems? How do individual or collective identities mould the migration of knowledge? At what point does the transformation process end and something new or different emerge? How can we map the political and social implications of knowledge in motion?

​A few days after the attacks claimed by IS that shocked Paris and the rest of the world, exponents of an ignorant and racist propaganda started using the terms Muslim, migrant and terrorist interchangeably. Identity – both of people and of places - is the result of a social construction. Stories from the Edge intends to explore the relationship between identity and hyper-identity of places and the flow of information in both directions between Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. In the project statement asks: "Where does the boundary lie between reality and fabrication? How does this imagined 'concept of a place' travel there from somewhere else, sometimes even usurping its authentic identity? By replacing the word "place" with "people" you can find a further contact point between the current events and the project.

Petra Počanić

Mirko Smerdel - Discipula

Paola Pasquaretta

Michele Bazzana

Dejan Štefančič - Štef

Sabina Damiani

Aleksander Velišček

Marta Cereda

Helene Thümmel

Gruppo Immagine

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