Robida

Robida is a collective that works at the intersection of written and spoken words and spatial practices. It is developed in Topolò, a small town of 22 inhabitants on the border between Italy and Slovenia. Over the years, Robida has organized field recordings, landscape and architecture workshops, and symposiums. Since 2015, the collective has edited Robida Magazine, a multilingual cultural magazine, published once a year. In 2021, it opened two community spaces, one physical, Izba, a small coworking and hospitality space, and one immaterial, Radio Robida. In the same year, the collective also began to develop artist residencies, which adapted to Topolò and its specificities.

… cleaning and useless care, shadows, microbes and fermentation, contamination, bouquets, weather writing, flowing, floating, leaping and cascading, minerals and clay, watery bodies, the personhood of nature, pacifism and feminist activism, field-not-recording, the non-human right to space, landscape dwelling, ecopedagogy, care, weathering, vibrant matter, ecotone, hydrofeminism, kinship, Antropocene …

The fellowship from Visible is going to support the next summer school by Robida, the Academy of Margins, a week of lectures, workshops, explorations of different micro-landscapes surrounding Topolò/Topolove, readings, walks, conviviality and collective learning about topics related to the environmental humanities and environmental care.
The main objective of the Academy 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 the public. The Academy of Margins stimulates the 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.