Geographies, walls, boundaries, physical or cultural.

These are some of the themes dealt with in the ten-year program GOING PUBLIC, which ends its research in the Balkan area. The project wants to investigate the new cultural landscape, through collective narratives that establish a different relationship between the city and its memory, urban policy and public practices. The interdisciplinary, intercultural and intergenerational work presented in this long journey looks at the city, retracing its historical context in dialogue with the current situation 

Urban space represents political, social and cultural maps: a complex system of relationships and structures. The identity of cities such as Skopie, Tirana, Sarajevo has undergone radical transformations in recent years.  Faced with this exponential growth, the city becomes the place of greatest pressure for flows of people, capital and cultural exchanges.

Arcipelago Balkani offers the idea of passage and mobility from one island to another, leading the viewer to become a 'traveller' himself. The project redefines travel as a personal experience and a 'political act'.

A sort of 'geo-sophy'/ philosophical geography, as described by the thinker J.K. Wright, in which the knowledge of the territory is analyzed through new orientations and multiplicity of approaches: from the vision of the farmer to the botanist, from the traveller to the artist.

The Balkans are therefore proposed as a 'new frontier', a dynamic place to better understand and support in its process of rebirth, through alternative and sustainable paths.

Download here the book's abstract