From Go!2025, with love

How do you bring a European Capital of Culture year to a close without really closing it? How do you say “thank you” to a territory while promising it a lasting legacy? These questions were already on my mind when Catalina and I crossed the border into Nova Gorica, eager to experience the closing ceremony of GO!2025.
We know that a European Capital of Culture is built in stages—candidacy, opening, title year—but the closing ceremony always reveals what matters most: what remains, what circulates, what continues.

From our very first steps, GO!2025 reminded us that we were witnessing a historic first. Two cities, two countries, one single Capital. Two cities, yet a shared wound. Here, the border was long a source of pain. Walking along it with Catalina felt like moving through a living archive: each step recalled the invisible wall, the guard posts, the everyday fear.
And yet, we were also walking in a new present: the former checkpoint turned into an agora, artists replacing lines of surveillance with lines of listening, guard posts with spaces for imagination, and separation with a choreography of connection.

And then there is the legacy. Former border buildings had become the EpiCentre: artists’ studios, storytelling houses, brownfield sites transformed into open stages, cultural gardens, educational platforms… so many new uses invented upon the traces of history.
Italy and Slovenia now form a continuous cultural territory, carried by hybrid spaces, solidaristic artists, lasting exchanges, and a border crossed with the simplicity of a public square.

Very quickly, we had the pleasure of meeting our Slovenian and Italian counterparts—the core team, curators, artists, and mediators. Together, we exchanged visions: ones in which culture was not a programme but a living fabric of relationships; where art did not present answers but created the conditions for encounter; where territories became sensitive bodies to be cared for.
As our conversations unfolded, we could immediately sense the local pulse—the whole city vibrating, stirring… only a few hours remained before the grand finale.

That evening, during the ceremony, everything converged. The square once dedicated to border controls became an open stage. Choreographies, performances, light installations, techno basslines, children’s voices—the line dissolved.
That night, it was not an ending. It was a collective act of repair. One phrase circulated, soft yet persistent: “What was once separated has become a foundation.”

The handover of the title to Trenčín and Oulu was nothing like a farewell: it was an invitation.

We left with faces in mind, alliances in the making, and above all a clear understanding of what a closing ceremony of a Capital year truly represents. GO!2025 is not just a title; it is an impulse that is only just beginning, where invention is imagined without borders.

Greetings from the Italian–Slovenian border.