Emotional map of inland villages

Francesco Escalona - Neaples

"Together with some friends of the House of Paesology of Trevico, founded last year in Baronia, land of Irpinia, and other people from all over Italy, we started an experimental project: we explore with emotional attention and try to adequately represent through an innovative, integrated and holistic scope the wonderful villages of Italy and Europe too. For the moment we focus on the ones of inland Italy and the territorial systems in which they exist.
I'm talking about the valleys, river basins, "i tratturi"... the geographical and cultural "containers" in which life has unfolded for centuries. These places are incredibly rich and diverse, filled with history and stories. The people as well as the animals that have inhabited them have shaped and determined the evolution of their cultures.
These are somehow physical and human landscapes.
These project, Emotional map of inland villages, originates from the approach of paesologist Franco Arminio, who sure enough is neither an architect, nor an anthropologist or an economist but rather a Great poet."

Francesco Escalona is an architect and a writer passionate about myths, archeology, landscape and beauty.

Angelo Floramo

Mappa commossa dei paesi delle aree interne.

È nato a Udine nel 1966. Friulano di sangue misto, è balkanico da parte di padre. Medievista per formazione, ha pubblicato diversi saggi critici, monografie e articoli scientifici in riviste specializzate nazionali e internazionali. Svolge un'intensa attività di convegnista in Italia e all'estero. Ha collaborato con PaginaZero, Letterature di confine, e con eSmaizdat, rivista online di slavistica creativa.
È direttore della Biblioteca Guarneriana di San Daniele del Friuli. Ha pubblicato con Ediciclo il libro Balkan Circus, fresco di stampa è Guarneriana segreta edito da Bottega errante edizioni. A Topolò con lui si inaugura la Facoltà di Balkanitudine: non una vera scienza ma un luogo dove diverse voci e punti di vista su quel vasto mondo ricevono accoglienza; un mondo che inizia ai piedi del ciglione carsico, quindi a poche decine di chilometri da noi, un mondo che influenza fortemente la cultura nella quale siamo immersi e con il quale i contatti sono da sempre continui, nel bene e nel male, talvolta.
Non è parlare di un mondo lontano. La balkanitudine può essere anche uno stato d'animo, una disposizione verso le cose nella quale, per riconoscersi, non è necessario essere nativi di questi luoghi.

Io credo proprio che si spostino durante la notte. Migrano, sciamano. Assumono vita propria, camminano. Forse escono anche dal manoscritto per visitare altri codici, e interagiscono con la loro voce, con le storie che sanno raccontare. Ne intrecciano di altre, in accoppiamenti favolosi e improbabili, che generano stupori mai detti.

Abimà Orchestra, conducted by Davide Casali

concentrationary music concert
in collaboration with Viktor Ullmann Festival

The Viktor Ullmann festival is dedicated to the rediscovery of “concentrationary” and “degenerate” music. The festival, which is celebrating its second edition, takes place from March to December in Trieste, in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region.
“Concentrationary” music includes compositions written by Jewish and non-Jewish concentration camp prisoners. “Degenerate” music is the one composed by musicians labeled as “degenerate” by Third Reich’s aesthetic standards.
It is crucial to rediscover these pieces, as many of their composers, even well-known ones, were forbidden to perform starting from 1938 until the end of World War II and even afterwards. The Viktor Ullmann festival tries to fill this gap, bringing to the public rare and even unheard music compositions.
Abimà Orchestra is directed by Davide Casali and brings together some of the best musicians from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. In Topolò they’ll perform pieces by L. Sinigaglia, C. Sonnenfeld, Aldo Finzi, A. Gentili.

davidecasali.it

Zluodij naj vzame ujsko. Al diavolo la guerra!

Video dei ragazzi della terza media bilingue

Il Novecento ha per Topolò una sola parola che lo racconta tutto: guerra! Immediata retrovia del fronte dell'Isonzo, sfondato dall'esercito austro-germanico nell'ottobre 1917 con la battaglia di Caporetto-Kobarid, il paese confinante; un fronte presente fin dallo scoppio del conflitto, il 24 maggio 1915, con il primo caduto dell'esercito italiano, Riccardo Giusto, colpito poco sopra il paese, al passo Solarie. Poi la seconda guerra mondiale, dove si sono confrontati partigiani sloveni, fazzoletti rossi e verdi italiani, fascisti, nazisti e cosacchi e i durissimi anni della Guerra Fredda, durata, almeno formalmente, fino al 1991, con il collasso della Jugoslavia; anche questo conflitto con i suoi morti, proprio a Topolò.
Ci disgusta la guerra ma fingere che non ci sia stata, qui a Topolò, sarebbe un'impostura.
Quest'anno ricorre il centenario della prima di queste tragedie, quella del '15 - '18, e lo ricordiamo con tre appuntamenti che dedichiamo alla gente del nostro borgo, che tanta insensatezza ha dovuto sopportare e pagare.

Encounter on clandestine cinema

with film producer Gianfilippo Pedote

It is true that every border place is a capital of clandestinity and Topolò makes no exception. Stazione does not evade this postulate but rather turns it into a poetic flag, especially in its film, documentary and screenings program. During Stazione the authors themselves often present unreleased and unseen works, condemned by the laws of market and profit; they unveil backstages and refined project that unintelligible circumstances have sentenced to oblivion.
All of this "border" material becomes clandestine cinema in our "border movie theater"; and clandestine cinema can easily have an extraordinary schedule, risk-loving directors and a very, very peculiar audience.

Gianfilippo Pedote, cinema and TV producer, is a pillar of Stazione since its first editions. He produced feature movies such as Fame Chimica by Paolo Vari and Antonio Bocola, Tutto parla di te by Alina Marazzi, Il Mnemonista by Paolo Rosa, Tartarughe dal becco d’ascia by Antonio Syxty; he also produced documentary films, such as La Situazione by Alessandro Piva and Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei and Vogliamo anche le rose, Noi Non siamo come James Bond by Mario Balsamo; short films such as Anima Mundi and Evidence by Godfrey Reggio with the music of Philip Glass, Il Pratone Casilino by Giuseppe Bertolucci, Pompeo by A. Bocola and P. Vari. Pedote has directed several social documentaries and RAI national television programs. He was associate director of Fabrica in 1994-95 when Godfrey Reggio was the director and founded, together with Silvano Cavatorta in 1980, Filmmaker festival.
For several years now he has been teaching at Università Cattolica di Milano and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. In 2005 Pedote founded Mir Cinematografica productions. He is currently involved in the making of a film based on Elio Pagliarini’s poem La ragazza Carla.

15 • 18 – Cronostoria illustrata della Grande Guerra sul fronte dell'Isonzo

Cosimo Miorelli e Tommaso Chiarandini - Berlin, Udine
con Massimo Croce - Grobbia

E' una "diretta a distanza" a fumetti che narra, giorno dopo giorno, mese dopo mese, le storie di due giovani soldati italiani attraverso la Prima Guerra Mondiale, dal 24 maggio '15 al 4 novembre '18. Autori e lettori seguiranno i due protagonisti (fittizi, ma verosimili) Tite e Giuseppe dalla vita civile all'arruolamento, volontario o per coscrizione, fino all'arrivo al fronte e alla vita di trincea. Le loro storie saranno narrate tramite il mezzo del fumetto, con uscite pubblicate online nell'esatto centenario degli eventi in esse rappresentati.
Alle storie a fumetti, 15 • 18 affiancherà dei live-storytelling, dove live painting, sound designing e letture di fonti di prima mano si fonderanno per rievocare le atmosfere ed i temi della Grande Guerra, creando un ponte tra il presente ed un passato ritenuto, troppo spesso, più remoto di quanto non sia in realtà.
A Topolò avremo il primo dei live painting (Cosimo Miorelli) di 15 • 18, con la narrazione storica di Tommaso Chiarandini e l'apporto sonoro dell'elettromusicista Massimo Croce.

progetto e bio: www.15-18.it
www.cosimomiorelli.it

Massimo Croce, nato a Ferrara nel 1966, ha vissuto e lavorato al Cairo dal 2001 al 2010. Ispirato dall'opera del futurista Luigi Russolo, Croce utilizza con estremo equilibrio i "rumori" come elemento musicale. Ha fondato la net-label ozky-e sound . Vive a Grobbia, nelle Valli del Natisone.

http://ozkyesound.altervista.org

Giuliano Ricci - Milan

L'uomo sulla luna (Man on the moon)
Italy 2014 - 60'

In the hearth of Sardinia, in a village on the Barbagia mountains a group of widows tells about their connection with the world of the dead.
For centuries women have been the voice of the village and have guarded stories and secrets of family wars and bloody revenges.
This imaginary has faded with the modern age, as the first man stepped on the Moon.
Ricci follows with his camera these old women who seem to live comfortably between what appears as a double, unsettling dimension: the living and the dead, with whom they interlace a constant dialogue through dreams, visions, prophecies and premonitions on which no rational doubt is casted on. Life and death are not separated entities to them. There is no wall to prevent the dead from entering our lives. Still, this documentary has so much life, even joy, thanks to the certainly unusual characters of its protagonists.

ToBe Continued 2015

registrazione del concerto di 24 ore del 24 marzo 2015-World TB Day

ToBe Continued è una maratona sonora dall'aspetto assai originale, della durata di 24 ore (dalle 00.00 del 24 marzo fino alle 24.00 del medesimo giorno), durante le quali diversi musicisti sparsi in vari punti del pianeta trasmettono dal vivo la loro musica. Il tutto in un flusso continuo, senza alcuna interruzione, a staffetta. Ogni musicista ha a disposizione 30 minuti.
Data non casuale quella del 24 marzo, da anni Giornata Mondiale per la Lotta alla Tubercolosi. A ideare e coordinare l'operazione sono Stazione di Topolò e Antonio Della Marina, sotto l'egida dell'Officina Globale della Salute / Globalna Delavnica Zdravja/ Global Health Incubator, il laboratorio creato nel luglio 2009 proprio a Topolò dal dottor Mario Raviglione, massima autorità nel campo della lotta alla tubercolosi, per mettere in contatto i mondi della creatività e della scienza.
I collegamenti sono avvenuti da Cina, Nuova Zelanda, Corea del Sud, Iran, USA, Giappone, Cile, Messico, Indonesia, Filippine, Bosnia, Marocco, Argentina, Perù, Costarica, Canada, Australia, Sud Africa, Libano, Brasile, Turchia, Russia, Georgia, Ucraina, Bielorussia e numerosi Stati europei per un totale di 44 nazioni. Di fatto, un simbolico giro del mondo in 48 tappe sonore.
Anche quest'anno il progetto ha incluso dei "punti d'ascolto" dove la musica è stata diffusa in diretta: bar, mediateche, centri culturali, gallerie d'arte, negozi, case private, il cui elenco è presente sul sito di ascolto. La tubercolosi, grazie al programma di controllo messo a punto dall'Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità nel 1991 grazie al dipartimento creato e diretto da Mario Raviglione, ha ridotto la sua mortalità del 40% ma è ancora una delle maggiori cause di decessi al mondo per malattia infettiva (circa 4.000 persone ogni giorno), un problema che interessa anche i paesi cosiddetti "sviluppati".
ToBe Continued è reso possibile dal sostegno di Lilly MDR-TB Partnership e di SANOFI e dalla collaborazione di UNIKUM - Centro Culturale dell'Università di Klagenfurt che ospita fisicamente il quartier generale del progetto.

Encounter with Alina Marazzi, director

Milan-based director Alina Marazzi has attended Stazione since its first edition in 1994. She gained great international attention with her first documentary film, Un'ora sola ti vorrei. Followed by Per sempre (2005), a documentary on female monastic communities in Italy. In 2007 she directed Vogliamo anche le rose, a poetic documentary on the struggle for women's rights. Tutto parla di te (2012) is a fiction feature film on maternal ambivalence combining different artistic languages and starring Charlotte Rampling. Confini (2014) is a short film on World War I created with archive materials and a poem by Mariangela Gualtieri. War is a subject that in Topolò, right next to the Isonzo Front and the battles of Caporetto-Kobarid, feels real, not exotic at all. Confini is part of 9x10 Novanta (9x10 Ninety), a collection of 9 short films of 10 minutes each assembled using Istituto Luce archive films. The shorts have been directed by Pietro Marcello, Alice Rorwacher, Roland Seiko, Paola Randi and others and have been presented at Venezia Film Festival

Solo

Aleksander Ipavec Ipo - accordion
Borut Čenik - effects
Nikla Petruška Panizon - readings

Solo, is the title of a new, freshly released CD that is going to be presented during Stazione.
Aleksander Ipavec was born in Trieste in 1968. He began studying accordion in 1980 at the Glasbena Matica (Slovenian Music Centre) in Trieste. During his youth Ipavec took part in various competitions, national and international festivals, winning the first prize in 1988 at the Festival Internazionale di Bardolino.
The following year he was awarded the first prize at the national competition "L. Fancelli “ in Foligno with the quintet Harmonikarski kvintet Glasbene matice Trst.
In 2000 he graduated in accordion at the A. Stefani Conservatory of Castelfranco Veneto. He currently teaches accordion at the Glasbena Šola Tolmin (SLO).
Throughout the years Ipavec has played as a soloist and with chamber groups and orchestras such Orchestra Sinfonica G. Verdi of Trieste, Mitteleuropa Salon orchestra, Evasion, The Original Klezmer Ensemble, Etnoploc Trio.
He is also the founder of the cross-border ensemble Accordion Group 4-8-8-16. Since 2001 he collaborates with pianist Paola Chiabudini, but also with Vlado Kreslin, Tamara Obrovac, Toby Lightman, Blanche Dubois, Tosca, Tinkara, Emil Kristof and many others. He has composed music for theater and film and has participated in many festivals across Europe and the US.

Made of water (live performace)

Simon Longo aka Dethernoise - Grobbia

The project explores the effect of sound waves on a water surface through the specular reflection of a light beam. The artist's intention is to underline the fact that all matter is made of restless particles and waves, just as our body - which is mainly composed of water- is constantly under the influence of energy fluctuations.
Keywords: energy, oscillations, creative Universal forces, morphogenesis.

Simon Longo spent his childhood in the Natison Valleys, where he recently returned - in the village of Grobbia, to be precise - to live and open a space dedicated to "artist in residence" projects.
Simon Longo is a sound composer and video artist (as Dithernoise) whose work includes time based audiovisual media and installation art, exploring concepts and ideas linked to science and perception.
Simon's work is inspired through electronica, dance, ambient, digital and organic aesthetics to create interdisciplinary art with reference to neurosciences and exploring the interconnection between sound and vision synaesthesia.

Maya/Rouvelle/Buiatti

New York - Paris

Stazione di Topolò will be an ideal space for us to continue to explore with sound, light and movement the qualities of suspension that take place on the frontier; where the essential in-betweenness of all things are evoked, with their shifting perspectives, dualities and parallels.

Maya.Rouvelle is a collaboration between Lili Maya and James Rouvelle that began in 2009 in New York. They integrate traditional and emerging media into objects, installations and performances that change over time, often in response to environmental variables. Electronic and computational media, fixtures of contemporary culture, add material and conceptual dimensions to their work. through a process of experimentation, observation, discovery and improvisation, we engage materials from the world around us to evoke sensations, understandings and meanings where our creative practice and the creative practice of viewing meet.
For Stazione di Topolo they will be joined by mezzosoprano Carlotta Buiatti.

Diplomata all'Istituto d'arte di Udine, e parallelamente all'attività di grafica-designer, Carlotta Buiatti inizia lo studio del canto, perfezionandosi in seguito a Parigi, città dove tutt'ora risiede e lavora. Nel 2002 inizia a collaborare come solista con l'ensemble Kantika, formazione con cui si esibisce in numerosi concerti e festival europei.

Quiet and fiery, journey from the center of the Earth

sound poetry reading
voice and text: Antonella Bukovaz
electro-noisemaking: Massimo Croce

The landscape is a sediment. The depth of the Earth is the starting point for a journey across endless mindscapes, mineralscapes, feelings and soundscapes… these are never conclusive but in constant motion towards the surface.
The sounds of the Earth have been sampled from a Nebiolo Superaudax, a movable-type press machine which lives in the house of Alberto Casiraghy.

Antonella Bukovaz is native of Topolò-Topolove. Her first poems have been gathered in Tatuaggi, published by Lietocolle in 2006. Since 2005 she focuses mainly on poetry and the interaction between spoken word, music and images through readings, video-poetry, video-audio installations and theatre pieces. In 2001 she published Al Limite with Le Lettere; her poems have been included in the anthology New Italian poets 6 by Einaudi and her verses have been translated in Slovenian, German, English, French and Arab.

Massimo Croce comes from Ferrara. He has been a pioneer in the use of analogue synthesizers and he has been long pursuing the realization of Luigi Russolo's futurist manifesto, L'Arte dei Rumori. Throughout the years, thanks to modern computers, he could experiment with the interaction of traditional instruments and new technologies. In 2004 Massimo Croce founded the netlabel Ozky e-Sound (www.ozkyesound.altervista.org).

Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra

Workshop for Luc Ferrari's "Exercises d'improvisation" (1977)

Since 2008 Topolovska Minimalna Orkestra has been a constant and ongoing workshop in Topolò.
Udine-based composer and musician Antonio Della Marina has been running the workshop and directing the orchestra since the very beginning. TMO is an open ensemble which combines musicians from all genres, ages and experiences, from acclaimed professionals to amateurs and beginners. This year TMO will work on Exercises d'improvisation, a piece written in 1977 by French composer Luc Ferrari (1929-2005). The score invites the musicians to improvise with great freedom on an electronic base written by the composer.
As Ferrari himself said, this allows the performer to explore his imagination, rhythm and musical intuition without the restrictions of a strict score.
The Electronic base on which TMO will perform has been kindly provided by Brunhilde Ferrari, to whom goes our most sincere gratitude.

POSTAJA DUO

Paolo Pascolo - flute
Giovanni Maier - double bass

The two musicians have been to Stazione several times and played for years in various groups and collective improvisation projects such as Homesweeper, Kaca Raca in Lev, Dob Orchester, Phophonix, Orkester Brez Meja and more. They now meet again in Topolò to confront their experiences and look for a unique approach to duo improvisation.

Paolo Pascolo is a flute and saxophone player active in the fields of electroacoustic and improvised music. He plays in the improvisation collective Orchestra senza confini / Borderless orchestra. He has been released by Palomar Records, Dobialabel, Qbico, Troglosound, Setola di Maiale and Ghost Records. Pascolo has played concerts in Europe, US, Russia and South Korea and has collaborated with theatre and dance groups such as Mattatoioscenico, Tristan Honsinger, Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Giovanni Maier, double bassist and composer, has participated to several jazz festivals all over the world, leading diverse groups or as solo musician. He has played, among the others, with Enrico Rava, Gianluigi Trovesi, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Roswell Rudd, Richard Galliano, Franco D'Andrea, Antonello Salis. Maier has been released by ECM, ENJA, Fonit Cetra, Soul Note and other labels. He personally runs his own music label, Palomar Records, teaches at "Seminari Senesi di Musica Jazz since 2006 and holds a Jazz course at G.Tartini Conservatory of Trieste since 2009. - www.giovannimaier.it

Open construction site for the recovery of a terrace

On my way from Seuza to Topolò I stopped on a road curve where a family was rebuilding a farming terrace. The structure, entirely built with local stones, had collapsed after centuries. The family had decided to intervene and opened a construction site.

On the road that goes from Dordolla to Topolò a great family adopted me. It is a family that loves terraced landscapes and understands their global value. These people got together with a common goal: to create a future without abandonment and marginality. The International Terraced Landscape Alliance (ITLA) was founded and it now holds a global conference, to remind Italy of its terraced lands.

I learned how to build with dry stone techniques from skilled and passionate people. I learned that there is a lot to do and a lot to learn. So I asked to the family from Seuza if their construction site could become, for a few days, an open workshop for the ITLA family. A dry-stone studio for skilled artisans, young and curious people, mindful visitors and the inhabitants of the valley.

Terraced Landscape

In summer the Natisone Valleys appear green and luxurious. Rich woodland vegetation covers almost totally the mountains and the hills revealing here and there the valleys and small isolated hamlets peeking out from the woods. During fall the woods take many colours, then they become monochrome in winter, when the leaves have all fallen, then small villages emerge and a dense texture of fine lines draws the mountain slopes.

Dry stone walled terraces characterize this landscape. They spread in a web around villages developing along level curves on the land, softening steepness and turning the slopes into fields easily cultivable. They are still, despite abandon, a fundamental infrastructure in the territory, They sustain and define not only field parcelling but also the skeleton of network connections. Many ancient roads, now pathways, have been built and supported by long stretches of dry stone walls.

They are the work of an entire community that for centuries has inhabited, built and transformed its vital space, using mainly stone. A landscape shaped by man and made his own measure, that tells about life, work and hardship, but at the same time shows mastership and beauty and the harmony of creating. A culture of inhabiting that resists abandon, in the stone trails that we would like to recover, preserve and treasure.

Zluodij naj vzame ujsko. To hell with the war

A video piece made by the secondary students at the Bilingual School in San Pietro al Natisone.
(12 min)

This video, made at school, is the answer given by fifteen thirteen-year-old students to the question "What is the First World War to you?". War is war anywhere in the world and the questions it poses are always the same. The wars of the past and those of today have in common violence, death and the dimension of absurd. These students become interpreters of the thoughts that question our conscience, which faces daily the horrors from TV and the web. The commitment to peace is the only sensible answer.
The video was made by: Emanuele, Pietro, Giulia, Giuditta, Eric, Elisa, Alessandro, Federico, Anna, Matilde, Matteo, Luca, Jacopo, Marika e Nik, coordinated by Jacinto, Donatella and Vesna.
Otroci otrokom | Children in the Great War: a message to the youth of today It is a Kinoatelje-Gorizia project in collaboration with the Bilingual School in San Pietro al Natisone, and the support of the Region Friuli Venezia Giulia.

...caro Fonso

Video by Leonardo Gervasi. Music by Massimo Falascone

Alfonso Trusgnach, known as "Fonso", passed away in 2014 during Stazione. Although he wouldn’t have liked it, on the day he passed away we didn’t feel like going on with our schedule and we chose silence. Fonso was a special person, a warm welcome to those - tourist or artists - who came to Topolò for the first time.
He was also a reference for those who returned to the village. His helpfulness and his talent to make all "foreigners" feel at home was unrivaled. To us, this is what culture really is, something you can’t learn on books or in the classroom. For many people Fonso was the very soul of Topolò. For a village to have such an inhabitant is a priceless fortune. You always have someone you can count on, for everything, you always have an open door.
We can’t deny it: his absence has drained Topolò even more and Stazione has lost a cornerstone. Until the last day, he asked to leave the hospital where he was hospitalized to return to Topolò, “because there is Postaja". The headquarter of Stazione - the Juliova house- was his gift to us. And a gift is to have had the opportunity to spend a part of our life close to him.
We’ll remember Fonso by screening two documentaries - in which he is the main character and that were born thanks to his availability - and with the concert that had to take place on the day of his departure.

Michele Spanghero - Gorizia

Monologue
(7'02, in loop)

The video installation Monologue shows the process of ambience recording of the empty Teatro Regio in Parma (one of the world’s most important opera houses): the layering of the sounds makes the theater resonate. With silence the theater is in darkness, but, as the sound rises, the lights slowly grow up to reveal the theater and, in backlight, the artist alone on stage thoroughly listening to the sound – the monologue – of the theater.

Michele is a video and sound artist. He has exhibited and performed in different international contexts such as museums, galleries, clubs and festivals in Italy, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and USA. Since 2007 he’s a resident artist at Stazione di Topolò / Postaja Topolove (Italy). In 2008 he has participated in a one-month artist residency program in MoKS – Mooste (Estonia).
His discs have been released for several labels such as headphonica, Palomar Records, Gruenrekorder and MiraLoop.

Viaggio in Armenia / Trip to Armenia

Texts and on-site visits for a film in the making

Since 2009 the Balkan-Caucasus Observatory, in collaboration with the production house Kineofilm of Triest, has been working on a narrative documentary on Russian poet Osip Mandel'štam and a trip through Caucasus he undertook with his wife Nadežda in 1930. To this day not enough resources to complete the project were gathered. To keep the attention on this project alive and continue the fundraising we decided to share a selection of materials with our public: the subject, process, direction notes and an early trailer we produced thanks to the "Friuli Venezia Giulia Region audio-visual fund". Direction and plot are by Andrea Rossini.
Stazione was captured by the poetic power of these travel notes and suggested to bring them to life without altering their "work in progress". Poet Antonella Bukovaz will curate this experiment.

Bernadette Weigel - Wien

Fair Wind - Notes of a traveller
Austria 2013 - 82'

The journey takes us over mountains and seas,along Danube, through big cities and deserts, to a cloister and a Rom village, past dancers in Odessa and men snoring in a boat’s cabin, to see the hard everyday work performed in a Caucasian mountain village, into the world of the rich and to the homes of the poor, finally coming to a forced rest in a Kazakhstan apartment.The Weigel's film is shot on super 8mm using asynchronous sound.

"I decided to travel without destination. To go east without knowing where I would be the next day. "Fair Wind" is about falling in love with the world at first sight. It is obvious that every moment only exists for that one moment, but this is what I realized on my way to Kazakhstan each time I recorded images and sounds. You can be the most perceptive observer and still miss most of these moments. There is nothing spectacular implied, but each of these moments is unique. It is like running around with a butterfly net. 24 frames of random light per second are burned into the film stock’s memory.
When working with super 8, one can hear the passage of time. The camera rattles away right next to your ear. And since every meter costs a fortune, you have to trust in your intuition when pressing the button. I enjoy this part of filmmaking, because it is like playing.
Images, sounds, associations, atmospheres, sensuality and rhythm - they dance together to tell stories. My choice of a narrative using a minimum of text and voice-over is an invitation to the audience to make their own experiences and embark on their own journeys."

Tiziana Bertoncini - Wien

PANTA REI – Danube time space

Panta Rei is a homage to the Danube, the river that flows through ten Countries, four Capitals and connects western to eastern Europe.
The work has been composed and recorded in Stúrovo, a town in the south of Slovakia, on the Hungarian border. There, the Danube marks the border line; a fluid frontier in such a tense area, scarred by discrimination and nationalisms. 75% of the local population is Hungarian. The Slovak and Hungarian schools are separated and each one teaches its own perspective on history. Hungarian children speak a very poor Slovak. Every day a gloomy melody is played from the gigantic cathedral of Esztergom, facing the Hungarian river bank, to commemorate the territories lost after World War I. The Maria Valeria bridge, built in 2001 has become a mean of separation rather than cohesion.
The sound materials used for Panta Rei are recordings of the river, steps on the bridge and the voices of students from both the Slovak and Hungarian elementary schools. The children whisper and scream texts on the Danube, creating a stream of voices where languages are lost. The Hungarian and Slovak words mix with the river, becoming a mysterious dialect.
Panta Rei is a meditation on the river, as connection and metaphor of the never-ending transformation that is the real nature of being.

Tiziana Bertoncini graduated in classical violin at Siena Conservatory and painting at the Fine Arts’ Academy in Carrara. After playing in orchestras and chamber music ensembles, she focused on contemporary music, written and improvised. Her work is oscillating between a personal research on the instrument and its sound possibilities, towards composition and collaboration with artists of other medias. At the same time her interest is focused on the crossing and synthesis between visual elements and music/sound.

Dotik

Meeting with the artist Cecilia Jonsson

Cecilia Jonsson (b. 1980 in Sweden) is based in Bergen, Norway. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, 2012 and completed the Nordic Sound Art master program the same year. Jonsson is an interdisciplinary artist whose research resides in the tension between the mineral domain and living entities. Informed by methods used in the natural sciences her works are often site-related, artistic interpretations of empirical material. Exploring the raw materials that create our experience of the world, from their origins deep in the ground, to extraction, transformation and global exploitation. In 2014 Jonsson was awarded Second Prize in VIDA 16.0 Art and Artificial Life International Awards for her project The Iron Ring.

www.ceciliajonsson.com

The original arrangement was for a solo violin and a string orchestra

Cecilia Jonsson - Bergen
curated by the Norwegian Embassy in Topolò

The project looks in to experiments of electro-culture, plant communication and how plants can be applied as analytical filters, as a mirroring of its own environment. The original arrangement was for a solo violin and a string orchestra from 2012, is an installation that shows an ambiguous process of an iron-hyperaccumulating plant taking up magnetized iron particles that have been scraped of from a reel-to-reel tape of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. On a later stage the iron was extracted again, glued back to its original tape and played. Resulting in an audio-visual experience of the plants reinterpretation of the music.

Cecilia Jonsson (b. 1980 in Sweden) is based in Bergen, Norway. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Bergen Academy of Art and Design, 2012 and completed the Nordic Sound Art master program the same year. Jonsson is an interdisciplinary artist whose research resides in the tension between the mineral domain and living entities. Informed by methods used in the natural sciences her works are often site-related, artistic interpretations of empirical material. Exploring the raw materials that create our experience of the world, from their origins deep in the ground, to extraction, transformation and global exploitation. In 2014 Jonsson was awarded Second Prize in VIDA 16.0 Art and Artificial Life International Awards for her project The Iron Ring.
www.ceciliajonsson.com

Les Tambours de Topolò

The rhythm of the forest

The group was founded during Stazione, in 2000, on the occasion of our first street drumming workshop for youngsters. Originally composed by 5 people, LTdT is now a much larger ensemble, well known far beyond the borders of Friuli and has been part of prestigious festivals and events in many European countries. LTdT's instrument of choice is a 250 liters oil barrel. Since 15 years LTdT represents a stable and longed-for contribution for Stazione.
www.ltdt.it

Christopher Thomson - Dordolla

Soundtrack for The New Wild

This July, as part of the Stazione di Topolò festival, production of the documentary film The New Wild: Life in the Abandoned Lands will be transferred from one depopulated valley to another, and, more importantly, from one extraordinary village to another (from Dordolla to Topolò).
The work will focus on the soundtrack of the film and will be exploratory and inclusive. As well as working with the musicians present at the festival, the main objective will be a series of recordings made with a spontaneous choir.
Towards the end of the festival, the work will be presented as part of a sneak preview of the film itself, alongside an introduction to the project as a whole

Christopher Thomson is a writer, filmmaker and photographer. Born in London, he has lived and worked in England, Germany, France, Austria, Turkey, and now Italy. His work concerns the metamorphosis of landscape and the significance of place, and is often drawn to the chaotic interaction between the cultural concept of landscape and the unpredictable natural world beneath.

Julia Kent - New York

In a forest clearing close to the border

Julia Kent was born in Vancouver, Canada, and lives in New York. She composes using cello, loops, ambient sounds and electronic textures. Her music signature has been described as "cinematic and impressionist", "organic and strong", and "committed and very personal." After important and formative experiences in bands like Rasputina and Antony and the Johnsons, Julia Kent has recently intensified her solo activity producing several albums. Kent’s music has been used for the soundtracks of several films, theater and dance performances. We first got in contact with Julia in 2012, when she took part in our ToBe Continued Music marathon on the occasion of World TB Day. Her concert will closes this XXII edition.
www.juliakent.com

John Grzinich - Mooste

Two recent works: "Listening in Context" and "Curonia"
Curonia

In its first editions, Stazione di Topolò hosted the american musician and filmmaker John Grzinich. In 2001, John started his trip from Topolò to the Estonian town of Mooste, for an artist-in-residence program. There he found the ideal conditions to settle permanently and create, thanks to the Moks project, based in a former Red Army barrack. Moks has much in common with Stazione, focusing especially on the place where is located and the local population through sound research. Over the past 15 years, Stazione has undertaken an intense exchange of artists with Moks, establishing a prolific “Topolò-Mooste bridge”. This years we will present two of John’s latest audio-visual works: Listening in Context and Curonia with which we’ll end our XXII edition of Stazione di Topolò - Postaja Topolove.

John Grzinich, born in Texas, is a mixed-media artist (mostly electronic) working with sound and video. Grzinich has constructed various permutations of sound and video individually and together in compositions, installations and performances. His works are often based on structures of organic systems in both concept and practice. Has also worked on large and small scale communication projects (streaming media, websites) across Eastern and Western Europe. John is the media lab coordinator for MoKS, an artist-run space in southeast Estonia.
maaheli.ee

Coup de foudre in Topolò

Thomas Lehn e Tiziana Bertoncini - Wien

For more than ten years now Thomas and tiziana have spent their summer holidays in Topolò, a place that impose it self in their emotional map, becoming dear to their hearts.
Nevertheless they rarely participated to Stazione: only once in 2005.

Tiziana Bertoncini (violin) and Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesizer) have been collaborating since 2002.
The special feature of the duo is the alchemy created by the meeting of the classical and the electronic instrument. The different nature of sound, the characteristics and histories of violin and analogue synthesizer could recall a friction. Actually, what happens is a sort of mirror game, in which the roles of the instruments are continuously exchanged. Bertoncini and Lehn move in an abstract territory, their approach to sound is contemporary. Nevertheless their consideration to music is quite classical insofar as based principally on tension/release, rupture, intensity and expressivity in all its facets.

Sarah Waring - Dordolla

"Farming for the Landless"
New perspectives on the cultivation of our honeybee (Platin press)

"Informative and thought-provoking, Farming for the Landless travels from the intensive agriculture of Romania to fallow post-war Kosovo, from remote sites in Slovenia and Sweden to the urban sprawl of Paris and London, exploring changes across the European landscape to better understand this critical moment for honeybees, beekeepers and the non-farming landless community we have largely become." Two chapters of the book of Sarah will be read: the first taking place in Kosovo, the second one in Romania. Translation and reading by Viviana Gasparella.

Sarah Waring lives in London and Dordolla. She studied Fine Art Photography at the Royal College of Art, lectured at the University of Westminster and University of the Arts and worked as a writer in London.

Encounter on clandestine cinema

Jan Cvitkovič, director

It is true that every border place is a capital of clandestinity and Topolò makes no exception. Stazione does not evade this postulate but rather turns it into a poetic flag, especially in its film, documentary and screenings program. During Stazione the authors themselves often present unreleased and unseen works, condemned by the laws of market and profit; they unveil backstages and refined project that unintelligible circumstances have sentenced to oblivion. All of this "border" material becomes clandestine cinema in our "border movie theater"; and clandestine cinema can easily have an extraordinary schedule, risk-loving directors and a very, very peculiar audience.

Dancing with Maria

a documentary film by Ivan Gergolet
Argentina - Slovenia 2015 ; 72'

Maria Fux is the extraordinary 93 years old Argentinian dancer, whose precursory style of dance has had global influence. Dancers of all social conditions and backgrounds dance together in her courses. Now, having tested and taught her method to others for a lifetime, Maria Fux takes care of one last student, perhaps the most difficult one: herself.
Gergolet is native of the Gorizia Carso area; this documentary is nominated for the Nastro d’Argento award and has already gained international recognition.