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Ana Opalić, Baia di Santa Caterina, 2025 (courtesy the artist)

Trieste Contemporanea is pleased to announce that the research project Komuna Maro is currently underway and will arrive in Muggia on 24 September, 2025, at approximately 6 pm, in Piazza Marconi under the portico of the Town Hall. In this setting, the public will be invited to take part in the Italian stop of the project’s journey, which is unfolding along the Upper Adriatic coast, combining research, workshop practices, and a traveling exhibition hosted aboard the sailing boat Mali div (“little giant”).
Komuna Maro (in Esperanto, “common sea”) is a performative and exploratory artistic research project along the Adriatic coast, curated and coordinated by Ana Dana Beroš and Ana Jeinić, with photography by Ana Opalić. Locally, it is organized in collaboration with: Drugo More and Urbani Separe (Rijeka), PINA (Koper), Trieste Contemporanea (Trieste), and with the support of the Port Authority of Rijeka, Marjetica Koper, the Municipality of Muggia, and A.S.D. Diportisti Muggia. The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and is hosted by the Institute for Contemporary Art (IZK) at Graz University of Technology (October 2023 – March 2025) and the Institute of Architecture and Design at Vienna University of Technology (April 2025 – September 2027).

The Komuna Maro voyage set sail from the Gulf of Kvarner on 17 September and is unfolding along the Croatian, Slovenian, and Italian coasts. It includes stops dedicated to study and experimentation activities, and now features three moments open to exchange with the people of coastal communities in Rijeka, on 18 September, around 6 pm, on the pier of Gat Karoline Riječke, in Koper, on 22 September, also around 6 pm, in Ukmarjev trg / Piazza Anton Ukmar, and finally in Muggia, on September 24, with an event designed as an opportunity for collaboration and dialogue. This last event will present the first outcomes of The Sea of Infrastructures, the current theme of investigation of this research journey, which is set to conclude in 2027.

The exhibition materials, carried aboard the Mali div, consist of large waterproof portolans. These “nautical books”, each dedicated to a specific section of the coastline, serve simultaneously as research archives and alternative navigational tools, offering an unprecedented cartography of the maritime infrastructural landscape of the Upper Adriatic. Each volume weaves together maps, photographs, and texts developed by the team based on research and interviews. Voices from political science, international economics, and maritime logistics, as well as marine biology and activism—together with first-hand accounts from workers across various maritime sectors—merge into a polyphonic narrative that reveals the interwoven forces shaping this region of the sea.

At the public events along the route, the audience is encouraged to discuss, comment on, correct, and contribute to the information gathered in the portolans — which are not conceived as final outcomes, but rather as a temporary stage in a collective and continuously evolving research process. To support this, as an integral part of the exhibition-expedition, the website www.komuna-maro.com has also been developed. It allows users to follow the navigation route, access the photographic logbook and real-time oceanographic data collected on board, and receive updates on any schedule changes due to weather conditions. The website is also conceived as an independent artistic contribution by artist Mihael Giba, who has created a real-time transcoding of the data collected during the expedition into a dynamic visual form.

Komuna Maro explores the relationships between marine communities, technology, and infrastructure in the Northern Adriatic. By merging insights from experimental geography, oceanography, and visual anthropology with collaborative artistic practices, the project aims to reveal the deep entanglements of human and marine life within broader environmental and economic systems. Despite the urgent need to rethink these systems, knowledge about the sea remains fragmented–obstructed by language barriers, disciplinary divides, and a disconnect between institutional and informal sources. Komuna Maro seeks to bridge these gaps by uncovering hidden power structures, mapping emergent connections, and offering novel perspectives on the region.