Conceptual Framework
The concept of edge is inherently interdisciplinary and multidimensional, encapsulating the dynamic tension between what lies within a boundary and what extends beyond it. It operates precisely on this threshold, signifying both a crucial point where realities, actions, and interpretations can or should change, and an extremity at which existing configurations encounter their limits. An edge may therefore mark an end, but it can also become an intersection, a passage, or a turning point through which other possibilities begin to take shape.
Formally, edge can refer to the sharp side of a blade, the outermost point of an object, or a precarious position at the threshold of change. Conceptually, it brings these meanings into relation, generating multiple narratives and possibilities. Edges expose limits, tensions, and vulnerabilities, while also opening spaces for experimentation and for the reconfiguration of established relations. Across artistic, research, educational, social, and community-based practices, working at or through an edge can challenge established norms of thought, perception, and expression and bring different forms of knowledge and experience into unexpected proximity.
Within this framework, boundaries are not rigid dividers, whether between human culture and nature, order and disorder, inclusion and exclusion, or the global and the local. Instead, they can function as transition zones that encourage encounters and exchanges between diverse cognitive fields and cultural perspectives. The focus is not on centralised or metropolitan theories and practices but on the distinctive value and perspectives that may emerge from actions at the periphery. Such an approach creates space for experimental ways of living, thinking, and creating while bringing into view what is often considered marginal, less powerful, or non-dominant. In their article Edge, published in Environmental Humanities, Vanni and Crosby (2023, p. 165) cite Pratt (1992), noting that, by crossing boundaries that are no longer seen simply as barriers, encounters can give rise to “contact zones” in which linguistic, cultural, and scientific diversity may generate new understandings of identity. Such encounters involve risk and uncertainty, but they also carry the possibility of new compositions within complex and fragile societies.
To work and live on the edge means cultivating sensitivity to otherness and critically engaging with processes of exclusion, distinction, marginalisation, minority status, and peripheralisation, as well as with the possibilities for social change that may arise through them. The edge is a “travelling concept” that carries multiple intellectual genealogies while retaining a central tension: it names a transition zone in which different systems, practices, and forms of experience meet, interfere with one another, and may give rise to new configurations (Pratt, 1992, as cited in Vanni & Crosby, 2023, p. 165). In the context of ERUA, the edge serves as a key thematic lens for exploring the role of the arts in research and critical inquiry. The second Arts & Edges Biennale continues this exploration, inviting renewed engagements with edges as sites of encounter, tension, experimentation, and possible transformation across the different contexts and thematic areas of the Alliance.
