Not Just a Place but a Situation

In autumn 2021, “Inside the Outset: Evoking a Space of Passage” by Rosa Barba opened in the UN buffer zone in Cyprus. The two-part work consists of a film, which was shown at the opening, and an amphitheatre embedded in the landscape of the buffer zone. This was to be accessible from both the occupied Turkish Cypriot and the Greek Cypriot sides and used as an open-air cinema, stage and meeting place. In the uninhabited, inaccessible buffer zone, characterized by a high bio-diversity, new connecting lines were to be created between north and south, intersecting in the area of the cinema. Rosa Barba invited the European Kunsthalle – itself a place without a physical location, which takes shape in relation to other places and circumstances – to develop a programme for the cinema together with representatives of local communities. The aim was to use its curatorial-artistic activation and the surrounding territory to create a long-term presence that offers a space for the many Cypriot communities.

In collaboration with Famagusta Avenue Garage, a Cypriot intercommunal cultural centre, and with the support of the Goethe-Institut, we explored the possibilities and feasibility of such a cross-border activation of the cinema at the end of 2023, had discussions and developed, together with several artists, scenarios that we hope will be feasible in the future. In her essay “Coming Together at Inside the Outset”, Olga Kourelou, film scholar and curator from Nicosia, has summarised the topological and political situation and the history and sociality of the open-air cinema as a space for gathering.