Graziano V, Pupovac T (2023). Refractions, borderlines and unbureaucratic politics.Valeria Graziano in conversation with Tihana Pupovać.. In: (a cura di): Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo, AS IF – 16 Dialogues about Sheep, Black Holes, and Movement.. p. 133-143, Leipzig : Spector Books, ISBN: 9783959057523 Refractions, borderlines and unbureaucratic politics Valeria Graziano and Tihana Pupovac VG I would like to start this dialogue then by evoking an element of resonance with my first encounter with Lungomare and its community of practice, which in 2008 took the shape of a residency scheme that brought together a number of artists, theorists and activists to work with local migrant and antiracist organizations. Much of their work, at the time, grappled with the socio-political impact of the ‘Balkan route’, the path followed by undocumented migrant attempting to reach central Europe. Since moving to the Balkan region, I became more aware of the recurrence of the idea of this part of the world’s perception as a territory ‘in the periphery’ and ‘on the border’. This trope of being situated in a ‘peripheral’ space has been ascribed both to Lungomare in Bolzano and to the whole Western Balkans region covered by the work of Kooperativa, hence it might be a fruitful one to being refuting. What does it mean to define something as peripheral? Is peripheral close to “provincial” or “borderline”? Being borderline, in the sense of at risk of becoming dangerous, but also as simply close to borders, is also a slippage of signification that interest me. A second but related point has to do with both Lungomare and Kooperativa as entities that (re)produce cultural spaces in contexts traversed by minority politics. How can minority politics be progressive in the contemporary moment? Are minority cultural politics able to - maybe paradoxically - offer paths that lead us away from the scarcity-based approaches within identity politics? TP