Stazione di Topolò / Postaja Topolove
Topolò is a small village scattered among the mountains of the Natisone valleys. The name of the village derives from the poplar tree, in Slovenian ‘topol’.
The buildings are very compact and separated only by narrow cobbled pedestrian streets.
The most typical house, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is the izba house, which has two rooms per floor and is built on three levels.
The first room on the mezzanine floor, called the black kitchen, contains a low open hearth and the feed inlet of the stove-oven called ‘pec’.
A door leads into the dining room where the pec is covered with majolica tiles.
Topolò is famous for the event called Stazione di Topolò / Postaja Topolove, which touches on various fields of art and communication: film, drawing, photography, music, poetry and theatre.
It is an international event that takes place every year in July, involving artists from various disciplines and countries around the world who are engaged in research and experimentation. The artists are hosted in the small village of Topolò, where they carry out an “intervention” based on the stimuli received from the place itself.
It is not a festival but a small-scale frontier workshop, on the Italian-Slovenian border in Benecija, where cultures, languages and sounds from all over the world come together. Projects are carried out on site, inspired directly by contact with and knowledge of the place, which thus becomes the driving force rather than the passive backdrop to events: experimentation grafted onto tradition. There are no bars or shops in Topolò; this is where the asphalt ends, there are no connections to the valley floor and only 20 of the 400 inhabitants remain.
Yet today there is an airport, albeit only for arrivals; a post office for states of consciousness, five embassies, an Institute of Topology, a hostel for neglected sounds, the remains of glorious synagogues, a Free Library for the circulation of books, the headquarters of the Global Health Workshop, a Universal Art Gallery, an Archive of Visual and Sound Space, and an Institute of Balkan Studies. The events take place in small squares, alleys, barns and woods surrounding the village; without stages, without wings, without separation between residents, artists and audience, creating an impression of choral participation. The events take place “towards evening”, “at sunset”, “at night”, “in the dark”. And everything is free. (2022)
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