Stories from the Edge

What happens in holiday resorts outside the high season, when the tourists—with all their expectations, fantasies and demands—leave?

'Stories from the Edge' sets out to explore the interactions of this fictive layer with the parallel existing culture. Where is the boundary between reality and fabrication? Like the coastline, this is an interstitial space on the edge.

Read the full project description

Stories from the Edge

What happens in holiday resorts outside the high season, when the tourists—with all their expectations, fantasies and demands—leave?

Once the Riviera of the Habsburg Empire, the coastline of the Gulf of Trieste has long been famous for its seaside towns and beaches. Millions of holidaymakers visit each year, imposing on the original topos and culture their notions of how it should be: an artificial hyper-identity that is then materialised by the tourist industry.

'Stories from the Edge' sets out to explore the interactions of this fictive layer with the parallel existing culture. Where is the boundary between reality and fabrication? Like the coastline, this is an interstitial space on the edge.

The core of the project is a portable studio—a VW camper van—that acts as a site of art production for artists and local people, of social encounter, and hospitality in the form of a pop-up osmizza/buschenschank. Following the coastline around the Gulf of Trieste through Croatia, Slovenia and Italy, the camper will make a road trip through a diversity of topographies, natural resorts and seaside developments.

Along the way, the collective will be researching the theme of hyper-identity with invited local artists. They will also be working with local communities to examine the impact of tourism on their lives and the everyday culture that persists. In six resorts around the coastline, the camper van mobile studio will be used as an in-situ art laboratory to create 'postcards' to send to Graz from the inhabitants of the Gulf area—in the form of images, texts, videos, recordings and other artefacts. These items will be registered and archived carefully for two exhibitions, in Trieste and in Graz. Has authentic cultural identity been displaced, or can it re-assert itself through these souvenirs, these messages from the edge?

As a symbol of shared historic traditions and original culture, the camper van will also act as a pop-up Triestine osmizza / Styrian buschenschank—a rustic inn serving simple cold foods and drinks like prosciutto, cheese and bread. Six osmizze around the Gulf of Trieste will be followed by two osmizze at the openings of the exhibitions.

Stories from the Edge is an international project initiated between the Daily Rhythms Collective in Graz and curators in Trieste, working together with guest artists from Croatia, Italy and Slovenia.