MARIBOR WITH EYES WIDE SHUT

KIBLA's publishing house mark TOX published A Romantic City Tour Guide  Maribor, entitled Maribor with Eyes Wide Shut, by the author Aleksandra Kostič. The book is available in Slovene and English language.


Fragment from the editorial:
»In the same manner as the Romanticist writers of the 18th century fostered a subjective view of the world and freedom of spirit, and enthused over the relics of the past and the might of nature, this subjective verbal and photographic account draws inspiration from different contexts of time, stories, documents and objects inside Maribor’s natural and urban spaces. By looking into the past, this account tries to confront the present and some of the possible gateways to the future. The romantic emptiness of the city’s remains and degraded areas offers plenty of new possibilities.   
The city guide before you does not depict all of Maribor’s aspects. On one hand it splays out the existing cultural, artistic, recreational, ecological and other characteristics and potentials, on the other it rediscovers forgotten objects in pursuit of more or less successful attempts to revitalize some of the town quarters, squares, courtyards, streets, lanes, buildings, roads and natural ambiences in this Slovene town, characterized by a turbulent local history. In the heart of Europe, on the border between the German and Slavic territories, under the dictates of rapidly changing ideologies, amidst the string of economic rises and falls and disasters both natural and political, in a constant stream of people with different origins, the present-day inhabitants of Maribor are still searching for their identity and ways of survival.«  

Aleksandra Kostič