Displacement Reactions

Displacement Reactions is a group show curated by Eugenia Delfini (Sottobosco) for DI.ST.URB (District of Urban Studies and Relations/ In Times of Crisis ) Scafati (Sa). The exhibition project focuses on visions investigating identity dynamics in borderlands. Many considerations are raised including concepts of border identity; territorial belonging; “traveling cultures”; border as dividing line between what lies within and without -between ‘we’ and ‘them’; as well as reflections on the relationship between man and landscape and the increase of “singular-plural” existential conditions. It is on borders where subjects search for spaces to wander and escape, live together, transit and hybridize. And it is from the gathering of materials concerning “deterritorialized” identities that the research on show prefigures and establishes a dialogue with the observer and reality. Immaginari di Confine, the three-channel video installation by Fanizza and Kunkl, opens the debate on “Fortress Europe” through the testimonies of locals and non-residents of the border islands of Ceuta, Lesbos and Lampedusa; Nunziata’s two photographic prints fix the two separate phases of the public installation Ibis Redibis (in the old port of Bari, 2011), foreshadowing a process of reflection on the transition by introducing the concept of migration through a vision that is both existential and political; Parallel, the publication by Cavarzan and Racco, is the first of a series intent on gathering evidence, writings and images that reflect upon aspects related to the simultaneous movement of individuals across territories; and finally, Degiorgis’ documentary portrait Transitando, produced in South Tyrol – Südtirol, investigates the contamination and cultural contradictions of a frontier territory. An art bearing a stronger resemblance to life wishes to express the sense of process rather than product and, through the experience of broadening the boundaries of the cultural act, affirm its existence. It is a situational activity that desires to be many things at once.