In ascolto (LISTENING TO)

Listening To. Traces Along the Margin is a project born in a land that has made the border its historical condition and its symbolic mark: Gorizia and Nova Gorica, towns that have experienced separation for decades and which today, within the framework of GO!2025, are reconsidering the limit as an opportunity. The border is not just a geographical line here: it is an experience that shapes identities, relationships and horizons.

The project starts from here and takes the border as its poetic, political and human subject matter. It explores its paradoxes — a place of separation and contact, tension and encounter, concrete or symbolic, real or imagined — transforming it into a field of research that is not only aesthetic, but also a shared space for participation.

At the centre, two complementary dimensions intertwine: public art and participatory art.

Whenever public art is truly capable of expressing itself, it doesn’t simply “stay” in the urban space: it questions it, shifts it, opens up a new way of thinking. It is not an object placed on a site, but a device that changes the perception of that place itself. Participatory art, on the other hand, focuses on relationships. It shifts the focus from outcome to process, from form to community, from individual authorship to shared production. The artist becomes a catalyst, an interpreter, a traveling companion.

Listening To moves between these two dimensions: a work created from encounters, words, gestures and unmediated narratives, gathered by the various groups involved. The word — a cornerstone in Matteo Attruia’s practice — is no longer an isolated matter here but it becomes a collective subject, a shared vocabulary, an emotional map of human territory.

The project takes shape through five listening paths with different communities: young people, migrants, the elderly, adults in vulnerable situations. Each group offers a different perspective on the border: waiting, crossing, desire, the struggle of staying, the impossibility of leaving or doing.

The installation, at the centre of the exhibition, condenses this research on words and essentially conveys the stratification of experiences shared during the encounters. The artist's presence is discreet and respectful, but always vigilant: in welcoming the voices that emerge, it becomes a sensitive surface capable of listening, filtering and conveying complexity without simplifying it.

His intervention takes shape in a linguistic and visual game that transforms the expression "state border" into "border state": an emotional, political and symbolic condition that crosses people and territories. Alongside it are two further installations developed from the signs, emotions and narratives gathered during the participatory process: autonomous but deeply connected works that together construct a single conceptual landscape.

The three installations, in their complementarity, represent the aesthetic and conceptual core of the project: a narrative device that brings together interiority and public space, memory and current events, the self and the other. They are the visual translation of a collective process that, starting from listening, seeks new ways to inhabit the margin.

The exhibition at The Circle is not an epilogue but a step in the process. Documents, images, notes, visual and audio fragments compose an open narrative: a living archive of the dialogue between community, territory and artist. It is a place where the public can revisit the folds of the path, grasp its emotional and symbolic depth, and become part of the work itself.

In a Europe crossed by new borders and new divisions, In Ascolto offers a space for attention, responsibility and care. It does not close, but opens; it does not simplify, but welcomes; it does not impose, but accompanies. The legacy it leaves behind is not only the final work, but the gesture that made it possible: a territory that listens to itself and, in listening, transforms itself.

A creative and artistic journey that finds natural continuity in the vision of QuiAltrove ETS.

The association operates within the complexities of the cross-border Gorizia region with the belief — certainly ambitious, but grounded in the field — that contemporary art can lead to real change. In this way, it promotes an open and participatory culture, viewing artistic languages ​​as tools capable of uniting people, breathing new life into places and supporting the growth of more aware communities.

In this context, it is above all the young people who show us the way: not as bystanders, but as an active energy that transforms the margin into a space in which to imagine – and claim – one’s own future. in un luogo in cui immaginare — e rivendicare — il proprio futuro.