“Every story has a beginning, every story has an end. We inhabit the in-between, where everything happens, where nothing happens.”
From the windows of MADE, the Ocean Viking is an everyday presence, moored at the quay in the port of Syracuse. Its presence brings into sharp focus questions about our work and the very meaning of art’s pedagogical dimension. It was from this perspective that we welcomed SOS MEDITERRANEE’s proposal to develop a project dedicated to the Central Mediterranean, together with the Academy’s students. The aim was to contribute to shaping an imaginary of solidarity that would avoid falling into either humanitarian rhetoric or the spectacularisation of trauma.
The project was curated by Sofia Baldi Pighi, MADE curator and lecturer, whose research explores artistic practices of civil resistance in the Mediterranean. As part of the third-year Multimedia Installations course in the Visual Arts programme, Baldi Pighi invited artist Claudia Losi to develop Anìmule in Syracuse, an ongoing project initiated in 2022.
Engaging with such a complex subject, one constantly exposed to the risk of rhetoric, necessarily involves a choice of language. This is why Claudia Losi’s practice was chosen. The artist deliberately avoids directly depicting scenes of trauma: rather than adding new images to an already saturated archive, the project seeks to open up a different mode of visibility and listening.
As the curator writes in the text accompanying the project, the Anìmule are “hybrid presences, creatures halfway between animal and human-animal: beings that evoke the spirits of places, preserve ancient forms of knowledge and dissolve the modern opposition between human beings and nature.”
They are “creatures made from torn and assembled paper, created together with the public through workshops for both children and adults. The absence of scissors is significant: the form is not precisely cut out through controlled gestures, but emerges from the slow tearing of paper, from the modulation of finger pressure, from a gesture that seeks connections and meanings in seemingly random traces.”
This work gave rise to the performance Quanto è profonda un’ombra? (How Deep Is a Shadow?), the first performance to take place aboard a rescue vessel, engaging in dialogue with the ship’s living space, which welcomed the audience on board.
The project took shape as a multi-stage educational programme. It began with a visit aboard the Ocean Viking, during which the SOS MEDITERRANEE team introduced participants to its operational activities. This was followed by a series of lectures and discussions exploring migration in the Central Mediterranean and the role of art and art academies in shaping its narratives.
Three workshops led by the artist followed, addressed respectively to students, the SOS MEDITERRANEE team and the local community. During these workshops, the Anìmule later used in the performance were created. Students worked alongside the artist throughout the workshop sessions and contributed to the sound dimension of the project by developing a multilingual archive of recordings in Arabic, Sicilian, Kazakh, French, English and Spanish, which Claudia Losi subsequently reworked in composing the performance.
The performance took place inside the women’s shelter of the Ocean Viking, a space marked by drawings and traces left over time by the people rescued at sea, which evokes a kind of contemporary cave. Within this environment, layered with symbolic meanings, the artist’s intervention did not overlay the existing images but entered into dialogue with them, bringing them to life. Drawing on some of the oldest practices of representation, the performance unfolded as a theatre of shadows: gathered in an intimate, immersive space, the audience was invited to reflect on how stories of migration are narrated, passed down or erased.
If, for those working at sea, intervening is a duty, for those engaged in artistic education it becomes a responsibility to contribute to the creation of narratives capable of safeguarding testimonies without perpetuating the violence they bear. It means creating spaces of encounter in which critical thinking, care and the ability to imagine together can be practised.
Credits
A project by MADE Program for SOS MEDITERRANEE
Performance and workshops: Claudia Losi
Curated by: Sofia Baldi Pighi
Third-year Visual Arts students:
Lea Boledovičová, Bridges Kong, Christopher John Lupos, Benedetta Mariapia Patanè, Ruslan Shegai, Ivo Velkov
Photography: Luca Natale, Ruslan Shegai
Graphic design: Ekaterina Selezneva
Sound technician: Riccardo Bellistrì
Coordination: Roberta Esposito
A project made possible with the support of the Otto per Mille funds of the Waldensian Church.
