From the NZZ to Die Zeit and The New Yorker—there is hardly a media outlet that has not reported on Matera in the past year. The small town in southern Italy was considered a “national eyesore” and is now once again the focus of attention as European Capital of Culture 2019.
In 2016, a group of artists and teachers from the University of Art and Design Linz set up a temporary experimental laboratory in Matera to focus on the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, on how the past is combined into different narratives from a present-day perspective. The publication documenting this in-situ laboratory is a hybrid between book, exhibition, catalog, magazine and object. The gestures of searching, unfolding, unfolding and turning around in the exploration of the real place were incorporated into the design of the documentation. Each of the folders summarizes artistic works and conversations under certain aspects: Emergence and development of this specific human habitat, infrastructures, continuities and change, architecture, cultural and social expressions. The large-format photographic posters on the inside of each folder, together with the video and audio works created on site, form a micro-format exhibition.
The publication is also available in English and Italian.
