Page - 168 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

168 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Janine Schemmer | Grenzraum in Bewegung outside, others chance to question, scrutinise and possibly even transgress existing perspectives and cultural borders and their validity through their works. One of these projects is the international cultural and art festival Stazione Topolò. It bears the name of the small village of Topolò, which belongs to the municipality of Grimacco, and has been held since 1994 each summer. Some of the performing artists stay in the village throughout the entire period, exploring the territory and related stories throughout their residence. This contribution deals with this form of mobility of artists, cultural workers and people interested in creative processes, which brings not only different actors but also the visitors of the festival to the remote villages. Furthermore, I focus on specific movements on site and on the (every- day) practices that have found their way into the villages and valleys with the festival and its participants. My ethnographic work is based on informal conversations and interviews with residents and cultural workers from the valleys and the surrounding area, as well as on participant obser- vation and field notes before and during the festival. For this contribution, I orient myself to the narratives of interlocutors, in particular one of the co-founders and curators of the festival Stazione Topolò. By means of this material, I approach the border demarcations and transgres- sions and thus the cultural and transnational movements and encounters taking place. How are the villages and the landscape perceived by the cultural workers and artists, and how do they use and interact with these spaces? And what kind of transgressions do these artistic approaches enable? Space and landscape are subject to a constant process. Tim Ingold recommends taking a »dwelling perspective« when dealing with landscapes, hence paying increased attention to the local practices of actors and their impacts and effects on the spaces. He understands landscape as a permanent store of past material, but also of cultural developments that have left their marks. He emphasizes the relational context evoked by dealing with the landscape, which is characterised by the experiences of people and inhabitants and thus culturally shaped. Besides the built environment, the visible, also the invisible, the imagined shapes our utilisation and experience of space. It is an important part to read the material and cultural traces: »The lands- cape tells - or rather is - a story« (Ingold 1993, 152). And border landscapes contain history in a condensed form. The initiators of the festival have made the examination of the landscape through direct access to it and its history a starting point. By physically experiencing and walking through a landscape in the form of a walk or a hike, it is possible to develop an understanding of the lands- cape and the stories that are inscribed in it, and to establish a relation to it. »Through walking, in short, landscapes are woven into life, and lives are woven into the landscape, in a process that is continuous and never-ending.« (Tilley, cited in Ingold 2004, 333). This close connection and interaction between man and landscape, cultural practices and forms is one of the starting points of the festival and everyday life on site. Movement and mobility are already in the name of the festival: the Stazione primarily refers to the station, which is missing in the village. A station is a place where routes and paths cross, a place of arrival and departure, a place of transit. The name thus refers to the difficult peripheral location of the village. By creating references to urban space, the curators position the festival in an imaginary centre, overcome the peripheral location and place Topolò in the