Abstract
By closing the Mediterranean border governments are seeking to cut us off from each other.
This is where artistic initiatives are coming to the fore – shedding light on the plight of those trying to make it across the Mediterranean and the ideas that they bring with them.
On the island of Lampedusa, Giacomo Sferlazzo has taken wood from the boats which carried migrants and is carving it into puppets.
They will be used in a show which is due to premiere later in the year and will focus on positive multicultural encounters in contrast to the hostile political rhetoric.
He is revisiting Sicily’s Opera dei Pupi, which is one of its cultural traditions. Now recognised by Unesco, the Opera dei Pupi dates back to the early 19th century and traditionally used puppets to tell the stories of Christian knights fighting against the Moors over control of the Mediterranean.
“My idea is to relate the potential for encounter that is already present in the traditional Pupi,” said Sferlazzo.
To do this he will transform the clash between cultures in the traditional shows into an exchange between cultures.
The show will tell the story of a Tunisian boy arriving in Italy to look for work. He says that using wood from the boats shows how porous borders can be when art gives new relevance to objects such as these.
“Memory is not neutral, it is a political act,” he said. “One chooses what to remember and what to forget.
“Wood’s memory is somewhat magic: from the felled tree to the carving, the treatment, until it is transformed into a boat, which sets sail with people onboard, eventually ending up in the dump and becoming rubbish. That’s when I arrive, giving yet another life to this piece of wood.”
Lampedusa is key to understanding the background for this work. It is under the administration of the Italian region of Sicily, but it is close to the coasts of Tunisia and for decades it has represented the frontline in the arrival of migrants into Europe.
It was here where, in 2013, one of the worst tragedies took place. A boat carrying more than 500 people caught fire half a mile off the island’s most iconic beach and 366 people died. The event was reported around the world and it became a turning point for Europe’s migration policies. In 2016, the anniversary was made into a national day of remembrance.
Europe’s strict migration policies go back several years, but things have worsened since Italy’s current government took power last year. Matteo Salvini, of the far-right Lega party and still deputy prime minister as Index went to press, has regularly lambasted migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean. He has also said that Italy will not be used as a refugee camp by the rest of the European Union, and a law has just been passed by the Italian parliament that any NGO vessel entering Italian waters without permission faces a fine of up to €1m ($1.12 million).
So far in 2019 the number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores (2,779 by the end of June) has been much lower than the peak in 2017, when 83,752 arrived.
But the death rate on the central Mediterranean route has shot up, from a yearly average of 2% in 2016 (4,049 believed missing or dead out of 201,097 departures from Libya) to nearly 7% so far this year (972 from 14,335 total departures), according to the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), an Italian think-tank.
Matteo Villa, head of ISPI’s migration programme, says that many of the deaths are because of the lack of government and NGO rescue operations at sea.
He adds that culture can play a big role in challenging disinformation and anti-migrant rhetoric. He cites as an example the Our Boat project, displayed at this year’s Venice Biennale. It was the wreckage of a fishing boat on which hundreds of migrants died in 2015 when it capsized and sank off the coast of Libya. The boat was later recovered by Italian authorities and given to Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Buchel, who had the idea for the project. After the Biennale ends in November, the boat is due to be brought back to the Sicilian port of Augusta to become an open-air museum.
But Sferlazzo says that art should stay away from easy sentimentalism. “For us it is fundamental to keep alive the memory of something that is still happening, with a critical perspective,” he told Index. “Today’s artist has to put together feelings with data, because otherwise all there is left is a carnival of emotions. Today we need more reflection – we need to turn art into something that makes you think.”
Together with the political collective Askavusa, the Lampedusa-born artist is behind several projects aimed at raising awareness around migration. For example, the collective has set up a museum of migration that displays objects carried by migrants when arriving on the island.
Lampedusa as a symbolic border is at the heart of the work of writer and theatre director Davide Enia, who spent several months there. He spoke to NGO workers, locals, members of the coastguard, volunteers and migrants themselves. His book, Notes on a Shipwreck, came out in 2017 and circles around migration although the word “migrant” never appears.
He retells the story of a young man, born in Morocco and raised in Italy, who spoke with a perfect Roman accent. He had been arrested as a minor for stealing a wallet and sent back to Morocco, where he did not know the language or have any family. Upon arriving in Lampedusa, after surviving the trip on the boat, he surprised all the volunteers because he sounded Italian.
“The borders that need to stay open are those relating to human beings,” said Enia. “Opening up the ports means opening up to the relationships and the interchanges that are the basis of life on this planet.” The book was turned into a theatre show, The Abyss, which is touring Italy this autumn, with international dates in Brussels for late October and a date in Lampedusa on 4 October.
The 3 October tragedy was also the reason why Emanuela Pistone, a professional actor and director, decided to use art as a therapeutic space for migrants who had arrived in the Sicilian port of Catania, her hometown. Following the Lampedusa shipwreck and another off Catania in August of the same year, she founded the Liquid Company theatre troupe.
Giacomo Sferlazzo inside the Museum of Migration
CREDIT: Ignacio Pereyra
She started working with some of the survivors of the Catania shipwreck, trying to provide a distraction and overcome trauma. The experiment turned into something more stable and the group staged four original plays on the issues of human trafficking, the asylum system and the struggles of migrants. Their original stories and texts are turned into scripts, but all start off with a joint experiment.
For example, members of the troupe read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights during rehearsals.
“The first time we read them out loud, after we had already studied them, several people started laughing out loud after every article. One of the guys said: ‘Nothing that is in there is true’.”
Pistone explains that these young men and women felt their human rights and dignity had been denied by Europe’s hard borders. All had risked their lives by travelling through the Sahara desert, many had survived Libyan jails and then they crossed the Mediterranean in rickety boats. The laughing scene eventually became part of one of the Liquid Company shows.
Beyond the artistic value of the production, says Pistone, what is important is that creativity makes it possible to knock down barriers and for ideas to circulate more freely.
“Creative activities manage to connect people through emotional relationships and sensitive communication. You connect empathically, no matter where you are from – you manage to overcome any kind of barrier.”