De Facto recommends

On January 22, photographer Rob Hornstra will talk with Giorgi Aronia from Abkhazia about European borders, visible and invisible. ‘Taferelen’ is a dinner & talk, organized by Fotodok in Utrecht (NL), connected to the exhibition Lost Territories: Tracing Imperial Violence.

De Facto was never as close to a border as this week: on November 12, we will travel to Maastricht (NL) for our newest edition of Off the Map. Art, science, stamps and a quiz - all about borders. Join us!

Films, exhibitions, workshops and outdoor activities: visit the Dutch Mountain Film Festival, from 4-9 November in the South of the Netherlands.

What is the true size of Africa? The ‘Correct The Map’ campaign revives the debate about the distorted Mercator projection and calls the world to adopt the Equal Earth projection, which reflects countries’ sizes more accurately.

How far would you go to uncover the truth? On August 22, De Facto’s Jorie Horsthuis will talk to Romy van Baarsen about the work of journalists at Europe’s borders, after watching Green Border, an impressive drama by Agnieszka Holland about the inhumane way in which migrants are treated. Join the conversation in MIMIK, Deventer.

The breakaway republic of Transnistria has been plunged into an energy crisis following the end of Ukrainian transit of Russian gas. If it is Kyiv and not Moscow that comes to the unrecognized statelet’s aid, Russia risks losing any remaining influence in the region.

After giving a speech from the symbolic Arc de Triomf in Barcelona and then evading a police dragnet, Carles Puigdemont has made it back to Belgium. ‘Today I’m in Waterloo after a few extremely difficult days,’ he posted on X.

As both sides of the island mark the war that began on 20 July 1974, it is in the knowledge that almost nothing has changed.

GP, celebrity chef and astrologer among defendants in third trial linked to far-right Reichsbürger

5 takeaways from the surprise election results in Catalonia, where the separatist dream suffered a setback.

More and more people are asking Ukraine to drop its defense and sit at the negotiation table with Russia. What exactly a deal would involve is largely left unsaid. But it would clearly involve freezing the conflict, resigning Ukraine’s occupied territory to Russia in exchange for an end to the fighting.

The war against Ukraine did not start in February 2022, but in the spring of 2014. And the root of the invasions goes back in time even more, as they were a delayed response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and earlier territorial claims. The online exhibition Borderlands - Ukraine in Historical Maps - with numerous maps and short commentaries, aims to shed some light on the historical backgrounds of the present war of Russia against Ukraine. It was curated by historian Harrie Teunissen and map curator Martijn Storms.