Academy of Margins
Antônio Lasalvia
Elena Rucli
Vida Rucli
Laura Savina
Aljaž Škrlep
Janja Šušnjar
Robida is a collective that works at the intersection of written and spoken words – with Robida Magazine and Radio Robida – and spatial practices developed in relation to the village of Topolò/Topolove, where the collective is based.
From 2015 the collective curates Robida Magazine, a multilingual cultural magazine, published once a year. The magazine explores different topics – such as abandonment, silence, the relation between domesticity and wildness etc. – which are connected to the place where the magazine comes to life, namely Topolò.
In the years Robida Collective organized workshops of field recording, of landscape and architecture, symposiums and residencies for artists.
In 2021 it opened two community spaces, a physical one, Izba – a small coworking and hospitality space for people who are from or who come to Topolò, and an immaterial one, Radio Robida, dedicated to our far-away community. The same year it also started to develop its own conception of artist residencies, that fits Topolò and its specificities.
In 2022 Robida opened her own Academy of Margins, a place of encounter between central theories and marginal places and the relationship between relevant authors and a younger generation that usually reads them and is developing itself through their ideas.
Robida is a curatorial group for long term projects connected to landscape and the place of Topolò. Robida is commitment, dedication, concreteness, care and responsibility.
Robida is a way of learning from scratch to take care of one’s dreams.
Robida is a group of people with a great sense of community.
Robida is a platform for creating a place of belonging.
Robida is a space where to dig deeper into things.
Robida is a place for observation and reflection.
Robida is a project to connect people.
Robida is a place to experiment.
Robida is a laboratory.
Robida is relationships.
Robida is a cure.
The Academy of Margins is a long-term project started by Robida in 2022: it is conceived as a learning platform that stimulates collaborative and discursive learning and is based on intimacy and rootedness where the margins are not only the site but also the widely intended content of the Academy itself.
The Academy of Margins transforms Topolò into a learning site, where one can put in relation different knowledges brought to the village by researchers, professors, activists, artists who encounter the place and the landscape and are transformed by them. Contents are situated in the place, adapting to it, changing through it: the context ceases to be the scenery of learning, and becomes a participant to the development of reflections, questions and knowledge articulations.
The main objective of the project is to invite relevant contemporary thinkers to a place usually excluded from their maps/travels/conferences and to stimulate the relationship with a younger generation of artists, curators, thinkers and public that usually reads them and is developing itself through their ideas.
So far, the Academy of Margins had two summer school iterations, in the years of 2022 and 2023, where, through a week of lectures, workshops, explorations of different micro-landscapes surrounding Topolò/Topolove (Udine), readings, walks, conviviality and collective learning topics related to the environmental humanities and environmental care were investigated.
The Summer School of the Academy of Margins is Robida’s culmination of the Academy of Margins, a scattered, whole-year project, a platform of events in Izba (communal space of the Robida Collective in Topolò) and Radio Robida.
At the Summer School there is the opportunity to inquiry about the non-, other-than-, more-than-human actors inhabiting the landscape of Topolò/Topolove and through that discover the possible meanings behind the term care in relation to a situated ecology.
