On Monday 29th January 2024, starting at 4 pm, , the documentary exhibition ‘Testing the Boundaries and Paving the Way to Democratization: Eastern European Literary Magazines 1945-2004’ will be inaugurated at the ‘Stelio Crise’ State Library in Largo Papa Giovanni XXIII 6, Trieste. This exhibition is one of the results of the European project LitMag in which the UniTS Department of Humanities (DiSU) is a partner.

The exhibition presents a selection of documents and testimonies from Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Slovenia to represent the many attempts of resistance and openness towards democracy of which several literary magazines were protagonists from 1945 until 2004. Because, as Jacques Derrida wrote, 'There is no democracy without literature and there is no literature without democracy'.

The exhibition concludes a two-year research project at DiSU as part of the European project LitMag. The research, which gathered the contributions of eight partners from six European countries, focused on the role of opposition and resistance played by some literary magazines in Eastern Europe and, subsequently, on the weight they had in the democratisation processes of the nations involved.

The materials on display thus retrace the history of twelve literary magazines. These include ‘La battana’, founded in Rijeka in 1964 as part of the cultural initiatives of the Union of Italians of Istria and Rijeka, which played an important role in the cultural connection between Italy and Yugoslavia. Collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the State Library of Trieste made it possible to enhance several issues of these magazines in the library's catalogues.

The exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, will be open until 15 February 2024, with free admission, from Monday to Thursday, from 8.30 am to 6.30 pm.

The scientific-organisational committee for the exhibition includes Sergia Adamo, professor of Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature, Vesna Mikolič, professor of Slovene Language and Literature, in collaboration with Francesca Richetti and Iwan Paolini.

Project co-ordination: Beletrina Academic Press,

Partners: Slovenia National Museum of Contemporary History (Slovenia), University of Salzburg (Austria), University of Bielsko-Biała (Poland), University of Pécs (Hungary), The Directorates of Vilnius Memorial Museums - Venclovas' House-Museum (Lithuania), Science and Research Centre Koper (Slovenia), University of Trieste (Italy).