Altrove Festival 2018: Post-Graffiti Stress Disorder at MARCA Museum

The fifth edition of Altrove Festival in Catanzaro, held August 8-9, 2018, featured the exhibition 'PGSD – Post-Graffiti Stress Disorder' at Museo MARCA, curated by Edoardo Suraci and Vittorio Parisi. The show recontextualizes stress disorder as a trauma induced by the visual overload of contemporary cities and social media. Unlike previous editions that produced multiple public artworks, this year focused on a single urban intervention by Austrian artist Mafia Tabak, who painted a mural in Vico Italia. The festival also included a ten-day artist residency with ten European artists, resulting in the MARCA exhibition. Participants included Abcdef (Germany), Boris Tellegen and Jeron Erosie (Netherlands), Alexandre Bavarde Saeio (France), Mafia Tabak (Austria), and Italians Canemorto, Gruppo OK, Sbagliato, and Tybet. The curators emphasized quality over quantity, sparking debate about whether moving street art into a museum alters its essence. Since its founding in 2014 by Edoardo Suraci and Vincenzo Costantino, Altrove has donated about forty public artworks to Catanzaro, contributing to Calabria's cultural boom alongside initiatives like BoCs Art in Cosenza and the beach museum in Montauro.