About

Robida is a collective that works at the intersection of written and spoken words – with Robida Magazine and Radio Robida – and spatial practices developed in relation to the village of Topolò/Topolove, where the collective is based.

From 2015 the collective curates Robida Magazine, a multilingual cultural magazine, published once a year. The magazine explores different topics – such as abandonment, silence, the relation between domesticity and wildness etc. – which are connected to the place where the magazine comes to life, namely Topolò.
In the years Robida Collective organized workshops of field recording, of landscape and architecture, symposiums and residencies for artists.
In 2021 it opened two community spaces, a physical one, Izba – a small coworking and hospitality space for people who are from or who come to Topolò, and an immaterial one, Radio Robida, dedicated to our far-away community. The same year it also started to develop its own conception of artist residencies, that fits Topolò and its specificities.
In 2022 Robida opened her own Academy of Margins, a place of 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.

Robida is a curatorial group for long term projects connected to landscape and the place of Topolò. Robida is commitment, dedication, concreteness, care and responsibility.
Robida is a way of learning from scratch to take care of one’s dreams.
Robida is a group of people with a great sense of community.
Robida is a platform for creating a place of belonging.
Robida is a space where to dig deeper into things.
Robida is a place for observation and reflection.
Robida is a project to connect people.
Robida is a place to experiment.
Robida is a laboratory.
Robida is relationships.
Robida is a cure.

Robida’s main goal is to rethink the possibilities of cultural work in the post-rural areas, which were once kept alive by agricultural production but were left behind by their inhabitants in the process of modern urbanisation. The post-rural areas are not just a potential and necessary site of future cultural production but also an important influence on the content and form of its artistic projects: the rural environment offers a qualitatively different spatial and temporal experience, which translates into a manifold of sustainable and environmental conscious outcomes.
In its everyday life and practice, Robida advocates for a future of common dwelling, an expansion of the concept of a resident to include in its definition also more-than-human inhabitants of Topolò and a deconstruction of some of the basic oppositions haunting modern ways of living: rural/urban, inside/outside, public/private, host/guest.