DURCHGANGSLAND – TERRADIPASSAGGIO (2024)
Durchgangsland – Terradipassaggio unfolds in and around the construction site of what will become the longest railway tunnel in the world: the Brennero Basis Tunnel (BBT), located in the Isarco Valley, in Alto Adige – Südtirol.
The history of this borderland–both a place of transition and boundary, geographically and culturally–stands as a symbol of conflicting forces and timelines, both natural and artificial. It has been deeply shaped by the development of large-scale infrastructure projects since antiquity, and especially over the past two centuries: the natural and social landscape has been transformed over time by monumental works that brought in communities of foreign workers along with their own cultures, just as is happening today with the Brenner tunnel and the hundreds of laborers involved in its construction.
The project opens with a prologue that, through visual notes and texts by Stefano Riba, explores the territory surrounding the Italian construction site—specifically, the municipalities in the Isarco Valley between Fortezza-Franzensfeste and Mules—focusing on its historical layers and drawing parallels between similar dynamics across different time periods (including the era of the Roman customs station, the construction of the Fortezza Fortress, the national road, the railway, the Fortezza dam, and the Brenner motorway).
In the present day, counterbalancing the underground mineral spaces of the cross-border tunnel works are the temporary villages that house the workers in the alpine valley: essential structures made of housing containers, where hundreds of workers—mainly from southern Italy, and especially Calabria—live for extended periods, sometimes as long as eight to ten years.
The core focus of the research lies in the work and living spaces of these workers, and how they inhabit these environments. Certain spaces (communal areas like the canteen and bar, private rooms, corners of the construction site, and underground offices) become places where an attempt is made to reconstruct a sense of “home,” a sense of familiarity, within a deeply transitory condition and a daily life shaped by intense work shifts and occasional returns to Calabria whenever free time allows.
Despite the massive scale of the project, the BBT construction site is mostly underground and hidden, and the temporary villages remain isolated from the surrounding context. This parallel universe appears both alienating and captivating. The workers who inhabit these places—miners, but also electricians, maintenance staff, and various specialized laborers—form a temporary community, largely detached from the host territory, yet united by shared roots and a common, “displaced” way of life, often invisible to the local population and largely absent from public discourse.
Durchgangsland – Terradipassaggio aims to be both a tribute to these workers and a reflection on our development model, as well as on what remains unseen in the contemporary landscape, where translation—linguistic, cultural, and in terms of how we engage with the land—plays a central role.
Durchgangsland – Terradipassaggio was developed through a series of artist residencies held in South Tyrol in 2024, invited by Foto Forum Bolzano and curated by Stefano Riba.
