Border memories. Re-enacting the difficult heritage

The XXth century was characterized by wars, genocides that left indelible signs in the European landscape constituting a traumatic heritage difficult to manage and have relationship with. Furthermore the intergenerational passage is causing the last witnesses to disappear, thus, how can we pass on the memories? This thesis aims to re-discover and re-activate the difficult heritage present in the transnational territory named Venezia Giulia, shared by three countries: Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. For centuries Italians and Slavics lived side by side, everyone with its own social position, but, during the XXth century in less than 50 years, the equilibrium collapsed leading to a drastic ethnic separation and to the formation of the actual Countries. The memory of that dark period had been, sometimes consciously, sometimes involuntarily, removed and never re-elaborated. Nonetheless the signs remained, fixed in the territory to bear witness of the past. The aim of the project is to go beyond the classic commemoration, directly involving the people and letting them interiorize and overcome the trauma, fostering the reappearance of traces in people’s and territory’s life cycle, building shared memories and thus creating a diffused museum as an instrument of re-appropriation of the territory’s past.As the project is situated in a border zone, its purpose is to favour intercultural dialogue and exchange on a European scale beyond the local context that the shared difficult heritage refers to. “The military ideology of boundary and control attached to remains takes on a different meaning through a process of resemantization. By turning borders into occasions of exchange, we open our heritage to the reality of the current European territory, where national boundaries disappear and permeability is both geographical and political. Indeed, “borders are not just dividing lines [anymore], places where differences assert themselves; they can also be places of exchanges and enrichment, places where plural identities are formed” (Warchawsksi, 2000). The difficult heritage becomes evidence for a recent history that has changed the power relations among Europeans countries. [...] Intercultural dialogue as fundamental to keep the multifaceted identity of Europe alive. The research goes beyond local interests: only by developing synergies at European level a transnational network will be created that will have the potential to share narratives of places unified by a common yet differentiated historical memory.” (recall project)