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BORDER RITUALS
I consider the cities of Nova Gorica and Gorizia as a single city, even if they belong to two different nations, one to Slovenia the other to Italy. Minorities of the two countries have always lived and exchanged culture and goods but at the end of the Second World War the two nations are separated by the allies by that wall that will go down in history as "the Iron Curtain", dividing families, houses and properties, which they will remain divided until 2004 when Slovenia's entry into Europe will reopen the border, but old memories of conflicts, grudges are still in the air and soul of the "genius loci".
Extemporaneous border ritual # 00 - disinfecting the border 19062020
This action was born as a "wit", an improvised psychomagic action added at the end of my Wash the Globe performance held at the Carinarnica Cultural Hub on the Slovenian side of the border between Gorizia and Nova Gorica on the separation and demarcation line between Via San Gabriel and Erjavčeva ulica.
Extemporaneous performance:
Disinfect the Border 19062020
Gorizia - Nova Gorica
Andreja Agrez's photo
numbered, signed and certified edition
Border Ritual # 01 - Flour line 19062020
Sweep the border line with a broom.
Mix together the flours from Slovenia and Italy (wheat is one but there are many qualities and types).
Re-mark the border line with a line of flour.
Wait for the work to be completed by the passage of the machines in both directions and the consequent spread of flour between the two states ...
From the text by Lev Fišer
Wheat and human beings are similar, says Salvatore Calì - both are one, yet there are many varieties. There are many types of grain, and therefore there are different skin colors, body figures, ways of building communities, cultures. Also, people tend to mingle. For example, a large part of the Italian and Slovenian population lives between the two countries, living a little on one side and a little on the other.
Borders are everywhere. Not just interstate lines - there are boundaries inherent in us, our personal limits, for example. Borders can be shared spaces, or they can lock us in, or they can shut us out. They are visible and invisible. When one border is destroyed, another can emerge.
Only if we face and repair the grudges of our cross-border population, will we be able to rethink borders and take them away. For this Salvatore Calì considers flour as an object of action, something that is more than one thing, indeed, it is a vehicle of unification. Can we make a mixture of different types of flour corresponding to the mixture between Slovenian and Italian people, and use it to disperse the line that separates us?
Border Ritual # 02 - border dust (a study)
video action - Nova Gorica (SLO) 02032021 07052021
With the typical tools of pictorial art; a spatula and a brush I lean over the asphalt and collect all the debris and dust that has settled along the border line between Erjavčeva ulica and via San Gabriele. Between Nova Gorica and Gorizia.
Thin border line, physically visible as the junction point of the asphalt laying on the Slovenian side and on the Italian side.
I have chosen to act here, on this borderline, by acting on the dissonances that (in my opinion) still vibrate in the energetic fields and in the memory of the two cities.
In a sort of mythopoeic the dust could represent and be seen as a sort of effect of the pollution of our thoughts, or simply the visualization of the transience of things and of our existences, but also capable of giving us rain and the miracle of sunsets.
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