Mind the Border is an artist residency project in Gorizia/Nova Gorica produced by Altreforme, aimed at the production of a new video art work realised in a participatory way with the local community. The professional artist selected for the first edition is the Swiss Anouk Chambaz (Lausanne, 1993).
Mind the Border was created with the objective of investigating the border not as a dividing limit between two national identities, Italian and Slovenian, but as a place of encounter and permanent coexistence for people from many nations of the world. In this sense Gorizia, with its history marked by ethnic, linguistic, religious and social complexity, embodies a uniqueness, a peculiarity that can become emblematic of global situations. The work that will be created aims to represent this complexity in a poetic, non-documentary way.
During the residency, the artist intends to build a visual and sound archive of the songs present in the territory of Gorizia and Nova Gorica. In particular, the artist wants to collect lullabies sung by the inhabitants in their different mother tongues: familiar, joyful languages, languages confined to the domestic space, forgotten, whispered, forbidden languages, languages that sing simple and repetitive melodies, that care, that heal, that frighten and cast spells. Through the prism of the lullaby, the intention is to establish a path of relationships and representations that are respectful of diversity, but also indicative of what unites us as people: belonging to a single human race. The artist aims to capture and restore through a delicate and poetic work a prism of these moments of intimacy, while also opening a window on the social, cultural, linguistic and economic aspects of this multitude of city identities.
The project also envisages meetings and informative and educational moments, thanks to the collaboration with the main cinemas for the dissemination of film culture in the region: Kinemax in Gorizia, Cinemazero in Pordenone and Visionario in Udine. These encounters, which will also include an important screening and artist’s talk with the internationally renowned artist and director Yervant Gianikian (Merano 1942), have the important objective of spreading the themes of promoting interculturality and promoting the languages of contemporary art as tools for reading and interpreting our time, bringing the public and in particular the new generations closer to an artistic and creative use of media languages.
ANOUK CHAMBAZ (Lausanne, 1993) explores poetics and politics in the moving image and sound. Her practice is articulated through the observation and experience of time: she witnesses encounters between life forms and geological-social landscapes, questioning conventional narratives. She graduated in cinema and philosophy in Lausanne and Rome, and specialised with the master’s degree Movie/moving images in Venice. In 2024 her work was awarded a special mention at the Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival and in 2023 she won a special mention at the Premio Francesco Fabbri. In 2022 she participated in the Prender-si cura residency programme at Mattatoio (Rome) and was a finalist in ArteVisione LAB promoted by Careof (Milan). She was also the winner of the video section of the Combat prize. Her works have been exhibited in various institutions, including Museo Novecento and Palazzo Vecchio (Florence), MUSE – Museo delle Scienze (Trento), Südtiroler Kunstlerbund (Bolzano), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), Macro (Rome), Newark Museum (USA).
Mind the Border is produced by Altreforme, Udine, and financed by the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. In collaboration with Casa Netural, Associazione ETRARTE, Agorè, Young for Fun, Cinemazero, Visionario, Kinemax, University of Nova Gorica School of Arts.
