WHERE TO GO

by MIHA KOSOVEL

The issue of multilingualism is one of the constant hot topics of our region. Although it has been inscribed in the very life of Gorizia throughout its entire recorded history, it has become a political issue at least since the mid-19th century. We sometimes think of multilingualism as a kind of speciality. It seems normal to us that every country has one language, that people speak one way in some places and another in others. We automatically take monolingualism and monoculture as the standard, while multilingualism and multiethnicity of a territory as a mistake. The time of modernity, when cities grew, urbanized, industrialized, when education, libraries, newspapers developed, was also a time of national awakening and nationalism. Nationalism was not always a negative force. To a large extent, the self-awareness of a community based on customs, collective memory and, of course, language enabled the development of many solidarity institutions, such as savings banks, educational and cultural centers, and various chambers of commerce and crafts, which helped develop the economic base of a particular nation. In multiethnic cities, these often developed even more vividly in parallel with each other, both in competition and in mutual fertilization. Although not without friction, struggles, distrust and sometimes even opposition, they conducted their struggle for recognition and influence in the city in an extremely civilized manner by our standards and could have developed into true multiethnic and multilingual centers over time, if their struggles had not been fueled by the world war, if distrust had not intensified into hostility and existential fear of the other. What happened in Gorizia happened in many other places in Central Europe, and many of them are still facing this trauma today and are looking for ways to live.

When we started the European Capital of Culture project, this point – at least for those of us from the candidate group who lived and worked in Gorizia – was central: how to sew up the space through culture and enable it to overcome the trauma of a bloody short century. Or more precisely, given that to a large extent culture, especially that outside of institutions, has already done so: how, through a truly large project, too big for just one of our cities, to harness all existing forces in the territory in the service of integrating a territory full of trauma in a lasting way, where a new common reality will overcome the forces that profit from separation? The project was partially successful. We will take time to analyze it in future reviews. For now, let us just emphasize that – beyond what was consciously managed by the Institute, municipalities and EGTC – the project was largely more successful precisely in its unplanned externalities.

What do we mean by this? The ECOC project triggered a dynamic that emerged from strictly cultural circles and began to resonate among the population and institutions. With a change of perspective that no longer sees two cities as the last milestone of their national territory, living parallel to each other, but as one geographical and fatefully connected whole, still inventing a common existence, all institutions also had to answer the question: what is our role in the new cross-border space? One of the most important aspects was precisely the international interest in issues of (cross)borders. Researchers, academics, artists, activists and political decision-makers from all over the world did not just come to observe our places as some kind of wonder, but to explore them together with the actors on the territory and participated in this process themselves. In this way, the Goriška region was not only a museum of strange local ideas, but also a place for discovering ideas and processes on a European level, where the focus is on first-class global themes: the question of borders and cross-border cooperation, war and peacebuilding, fugitives, the intersection of identities, and not least topics dealing with marginality, the relationship between nature and the urban, the relationship between the new and the old, between memory and history. Above all, this space became internationally interesting and also offered the locals a new, fresh awareness, because it was not just about Slovenia or just about Italy, but a space where efforts are being made to create a practical and organized community on a multilingual, multi-ethnic and multinational level, which does not yet have a fully developed legal, administrative or any other framework and which needs to be invented through practice.

If we want our space to continue to be interesting for locals, so that they will want to stay and be active here, and for foreigners, so that they will want to visit us and cooperate with us, if we do not want to become the periphery of our own countries again, but an interesting and dynamic European center in contact with global trends, if we want to become a space that does not only mourn a more or less invented glorious past, but is able to see itself as a co-creator of its own future and thus also an example for other places in Europe and the world that are separated by borders or torn apart by interethnic hostilities, we must translate the basic postulates that we celebrated in 2025 into everyday life, both at political and other levels. Cross-border partnerships, multilingualism, the imagination of practical cross-border institutions and political bodies must be a necessary framework for the survival of the ECOC legacy. If the years of preparation were a long pregnancy and the year 2025 was a celebration of the birth of a newborn, full of joy, closeness, and hope, now the child is one year old and needs to be bought a winter coat and taught to walk.