Inhabited Dissonance. Bozen Bolzano 1922-2025

This exhibition is part of the interdisciplinary research project “Curating Bolzano Fascist Legacies. A Sustainable Approach to a City’s Dissonant Heritage”. The project began in 2022 and involved designers, art historians, architects and design historians. The project – which benefited from the collaboration of BAU Institute for Contemporary Art and Ecology, the Lungomare cooperative and the Department of Architectural History and Curatorial Studies at the Technical University of Munich, and was supported by the Municipality of Bolzano – was divided into two parts: on the one hand, it developed in-depth research on the traces of Fascist-era interventions still present in the urban public space, which make Bolzano a fascinating subject of study as a border city where the Fascist system is still clearly visible and where different perceptions of the past coexist, not always harmoniously. On the other hand, it explored how the results of the research could be made accessible not only to experts, but to the city as a whole and therefore to its inhabitants. The exhibition brings together the considerations that emerged during the research with a selection of archival materials and a number of artistic interventions that, over time, have seen various practitioners confront the multiple meanings of the marks left by fascism on the urban fabric. The exhibition focuses on the traces that remain in public spaces, collective memory and archives, testing their resonances and dissonances, inviting a more conscious relationship with public space, capable of opposing its possible exploitation.