Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Matera, European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2019 as an ethnographic example of heterochronic temporality and frictions. In this "vernacular timespace" (Bryant and Knight 2019), local aspirations are not always in synch with futures ensuing from this late-capitalist mega event.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the ethnographic example of the city of Matera, Italy, which recently concluded its tenure as European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2019. The Matera 2019 ECoC mega event revealed itself to be a site of conflicting tensions or "frictions" (Tsing 2005) featuring a heterochronic articulation of temporality. Drawing from the work of Bryant and Knight (2019), the author sees a Time of Matera 2019 as a form of "vernacular timespace" among the Materani. After providing a contextualization of local aspirations by reviewing past futures in Matera, the paper describes more recent futures in the Time of Matera 2019, in which official horizons of a cosmopolitan, hypertechonological future coincide with tensions resulting from transformations of the city under late capitalism and the rise of touristic commodification. The discussion considers how the adoption of the "Open Future" logo and slogan for Matera 2019 ECoC, with an ensuing conflict, encapsulates a heterochronic tension existing between Matera 2019 as a mega event and the general population. The analysis also seeks to return anew to Italy's long-standing Southern Question with a reflection on strident temporalities: the frictions produced through the unfolding of touristic and high-tech development in the Time of Matera 2019 and the promotion of Matera, but also Southern Italy more broadly, as a celebrated site of "slowness", following Franco Cassano's influential notion of pensiero meridiano [Southern thought] (Cassano 1996).