DURCHGANGSLAND – TERRADIPASSAGGIO (2024)
Durchgangsland – Terradipassaggio unfolds inside 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 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.
In the present day, counterbalancing the underground mineral cross-border tunnels, are the temporary villages that house the workers: essential structures made of housing containers, where hundreds of workers—mainly from southern Italy—live for extended periods, as long as several years.
The core focus of the research lies in the working and living spaces of these workers, and how they inhabit these environments, a parallel universe both alienating and captivating.
In certain spaces 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 families.
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. The workers 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 and 2025, invited by Foto Forum Bolzano and curated by Stefano Riba.
