– Options
Options
book
2020
Options reflects on the consequences of the annexation of South Tyrol to Italy at the end of WWI. When the area, sandwiched between the present-day Austrian and Trentino borders, officially became an Italian province in 1918—ending centuries of Austro-Hungarian rule—a choice was given to the local communities: they could either stay, naturalize as Italians, and side with the Fascist regime, or they could emigrate to Nazi Germany and leave behind their culture and possessions.
Options is a box containing a set of playing cards that bear each an image, inspired by traditional heraldry, and a text, emerging from interviews with various South Tyrolean personalities.
The book was published as part of the project Options, commissioned by steirischer herbst 2019 and presented at Grazer Kunstverein (Graz) in collaboration with ON (Bologna).
41 boxed loose-leaf cards, 14x24cm
Italian, German, English
Texts: Riccardo Giacconi
Design: Giulia Marzin
Published by Rorhof
Supported by: the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism under the Italian Council program (2019), as well as by the Elise Mathilde Fund and the Leiden University Fund (LUF).
ISBN (ENG): 978-88-94881-04-2
The first version of the text was published as a series of letters written from South Tyrol and addressed to Ekaterina Degot, director of the steirischer herbst festival.
The letters explored the legacy of the 1939 "Option" agreement between Hitler and Mussolini, when the native German-speaking people of South Tyrol were given the option of either emigrating to neighboring Nazi Austria (and other Third Reich territories) or remaining in Fascist Italy and being forcibly integrated into mainstream Italian culture, thereby losing their language and cultural heritage.
The texts were published on the occasion of the exhibition Options, commissioned by steirischer herbst 2019 and presented at Grazer Kunstverein.
An Italian version of the text was published on the magazine Il Tascabile.
