Seite - 167 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 4/2018

167 Border space in motion Artistic positions and relational appropriations of space Janine Schemmer Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, Vol. 4 2018, 167-170 Editor reviewed article Open Access: content is licensed under CC BY 3.0 The border area this article focusses on is located in Friuli, a region in the very northeast of Italy, bordering on Austria in the north and Slovenia in the northeast. Friuli was one of the venues of major European conflicts in the 20th century. The Valli del Natisone, the valleys of the river Natisone bordering Slovenia, were particularly affected by these conflicts: in the First World War the fronts ran on the mountains, there the battles were fought. In autumn 1943, the area became part of the German Occupational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, where Italian and Slovenian partisans and German occupiers faced each other. After the Second World War, the region played a central role as part of one of the front states in the Cold War, where ideological and geostrategic conflicts took place and military bases were established. Thus, this border area was strongly influenced by emigration, which is still anchored in the collective memory today. These conflicts have not only left traces of a material nature in the region and its landscape. They can also be related to in the narrations and everyday and artistic actions of different actors in the valleys, which I refer to in an exemplary manner in this article. The focus is not on the experience of migration as a field of action, but rather in dealing with its consequences, such as depopulation, and their meanings for people and their living environment. The landscape in the valleys not only tells the story of conflicts, but also of the absence of people. Hence in the valleys of the Natisone it can be vividly understood »how global transformation processes [such as migration] are reflected in a local field of action« (Scholz- Irrlitz 2008, 8) and renegotiated in dynamic movements. While at the beginning of the 1950s about 18,000 people still lived in the villages, their number has fallen to about 6,000 today. Many vacant houses in the border area have filled up in recent years. Apart from remigrants and new immigrants from the surrounding regions, actors from the culture and art scene discovered the valleys for their projects. They bring new movements into the area and deal with conflicts and consequences such as migratory movements. In these processes, various approaches and positions can be identified, which develop different dynamics and can sometimes be traced back to the generational storages of the actors. The majority of them aim to preserve and pass on local culinary or agricultural traditions. Often, these actors remain in traditional narratives and open up little to new influences and developments. Coming from the villages and from