Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture - Volume 7, Issue 2, 2016

With this article I wish to challenge the concept of ‘crisis’, commonly associated with the arrival of irregularized migrants to the island of Lampedusa, by showing how this conception is usually the result of a fabrication and spectacle to which migrants become subjected, fuelling a ‘moral panic’ difficult to overcome. The understanding and representation of migrants as ‘carriers of crisis’ has inevitably undermined their dignity and rights as individuals. As a counter-narrative, this article explores a series of acts of resistance revolving around the issue of migration, where Lampedusa plays a central role, promoting the autonomy of migrants that is challenging the order of a securitized Europe. Through analyses of the grassroots documentary and theatre projects On the Bride’s Side (Angliaro et al., 2014) and Queens of Syria (Fedda, 2013), this article finally explores the possibility of perceiving art about migrant experiences as a domain of struggle, through acts that I have defined as ‘aesthetics of subversion’, where those who are normally depicted as ‘imperceptible bodies’ become ‘subjects of power’, the power of subverting the narrative around their journey, their past and their desires for the future.

The Archive of Migrant Memories aims at recording and diffusing migrant self-narratives in Italy so as to leave a visible trace of recently arrived migrants and their rising agency in Italian society. Retrieving oral and written records of migrants travelling to and landing on Italian soil intends to contrast, both physically and metaphorically, the hiding or cancellation mechanisms lying behind the collective unease surrounding immigration policies in today’s Italy. The recurrent dumping of migrant lives in the Mediterranean, particularly on its European southernmost gate at Lampedusa, symbolizes the careless disposal of irksome memories of migration within present-day Italian society. Here the remains of rotten boats derived from the repeated landings of irregular migrants on the Island and their human ‘waste’ – old shoes, clothes, cooking utensils, children’s toys, throw-away objects, but also water-stained documents, photos, holy books and individual writings such as letters, memoirs or diaries – lie to decompose as a vivid expression of what is not to be remembered in the nation’s past.

In this article I examine the history and main developments of the Askavusa Association, founded in 2009 in Lampedusa, the southernmost Italian territory, on the southern edge of Europe. As one of the most active and interesting collectives supporting the migrant struggle in Italy, Askavusa has received attention for its various activities held in Lampedusa and abroad, and especially for the organization of the LampedusaInFestival and the collection of migrants’ objects in PortoM. As an activist and member of the group, in this article I concurrently identify some of the limits of the actions organized by the collective. As such, this article represents the natural outcome of my participation and collaboration with Askavusa, combined with an analysis of several interviews that I collected in Lampedusa over the years.

The article will discuss the uneven path of the bottom-up Museum of Migration Project in Lampedusa, involving local and national associations, as well as the Town Council. In recounting this failed experience, this text will particularly try to grasp the use and ‘property’ of the objects and personal documents lost or taken away from migrants, the degree of involvement of the subjects directly concerned, and the ideological and political rifts that occurred around this project.

In the summer of 2011 I carried out ethnographic research on the island of Lampedusa on the ways in which those who lose their lives on their journeys to Europe are buried and cared for by Lampedusans. In September 2013 I returned to the island with seven theatre makers from the devised theatre school Jacques Lecoq to carry out a month of collaborative fieldwork research. The main idea of the project was to employ anthropological methods, observation and immersion in people’s daily routines to develop a performance about life on this frontier island. By focusing on people’s memories and on understanding what the everyday involves at the edges of Europe, we wished to address bigger questions of belonging and responsibility. Our group fieldwork developed into a theatre show, Miraculi. This article explores the different stages of the project and examines the ethical questions and methods, both theatrical and anthropological, employed along the way, in the hope of contributing to thinking through the significance of artistic projects and collaborative research in over-mediatized and saturated field-sites.

This article considers the art that has been produced in relation to the subject of migrant deaths at sea, with a focus on artworks that refer to the island of Lampedusa and its long history of the subject. Now that the world’s media are at last paying attention to the subject of migrant deaths, the small islands of Lampedusa and Lesbos are in danger of being ‘invaded’ by more than just migrants – artists are on their way in ever-increasing numbers. The ‘migration crisis’ has become the latest hot topic for artists, but art on the subject of migrant deaths at sea is often controversial, dividing both critics and audiences. Written from the perspective of an artist, this article explores the complexities of making and presenting art about this extremely sensitive issue.

Extract from an unpublished travel diary

(translated from Italian by Valentina Zagaria)

Names and bodies: Tales from across the sea

Return to Lampedusa

(translated from Italian by Rose Campbell)

Melkam Amlak

(translated from Italian by Rose Campbell)

African Migrants and Europe: Managing the Ultimate Frontier, Lorenzo Rinelli (2016)

London and New York: Routledge, 187 pp.,

ISBN: 9781138800519, h/bk, £90

The Somali Within: Language, Race and Belonging in ‘Minor’ Italian Literature, Simone Brioni (2015)

Oxford: Legenda, 176 pp.,

ISBN: 9781909662643, h/bk, £55

Portable Borders: Performance Art and Politics on the U.S. Frontera since 1984, Ila Nicole Sheren (2015)

Austin: Texas University Press, 212 pp.,

ISBN: 9781477302262, h/bk, £45.00; p/bk, £17.99