Why In Linea d’Aria

In Linea d’Aria, an initiative realised with the support of the Goethe-Institut of Naples, wants to be an opportunity to reflect on one of the challenges that have crossed the path of Matera and Basilicata in the recent years: how to search a relationship between remote areas, characterised by rare population, and urban areas, through culture?

The relationship between ‘too full’ and ‘too empty’ is a theme that the pandemic has made even more topical, highlighting its severe implications in terms of climate change, social and cultural sustainability. According to Rossi Doria’s well-known metaphor, it is an international challenge that concerns not only the “flesh and bone” of Italy. Still, it transversally invests the whole of Europe and the world, as we observed at the World Expo in Dubai when investigating the theme of the ‘remote’ with the other European Capitals of Culture.

This initiative inhabits the villages that make up the innermost area of Basilicata, symbolically , between the territories of Potenza and Matera. We want to highlight how culture can connect seemingly remote villages in the “Linea d’Aria” (t/n: Air Distance) and how artists -new temporary citizens- can work with permanent communities to imagine new perspectives and narratives beyond stereotypes or common feelings.

For this reason, Teatringestazione has chosen the radio: we have privileged in the path of Matera 2019 through the long-standing collaboration with RAI Radio 3 as it was the line of air that connects. The final agora brings together artists, curators, policy-makers, researchers, cultural operators and citizens of remote areas to discuss themes that we want to hand down as traces of the future: how can remote areas attract contemporary nomadic communities? Can we imagine Basilicata as a widespread place of cultural co-creation and meeting and exchange between temporary and permanent citizens?

Giovanni Oliva – General Manager and Rossella Tarantino – Manager for Development and Relations Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019