Paper short abstract:

This media paper explores Italy’s system of reception for asylum seekers during the COVID pandemic and the embarkation of people onto quarantine boats. The paper is interwoven with excerpts — underwater footage, hydrophone and field recordings— from my recent film Il naufragio inizia da qui.

Paper long abstract:

Through the conceptual lens of a shipwreck society the film starts from protests in the seaside town of Amantea, Calabria, where a group of people locked down in a “reception centre” contracted covid. The protest had the intention of interning the group onto quarantine vessels — repurposed cruise ships. During a period in which solidarity at sea and on land is under assault, the film explores how a nationalist imaginary of detention aspires to return those who arrive to seek refuge by boat, under precarious conditions, back to the sea and to the risk of shipwreck once more. Under the auspices of a system of hospitality the sea becomes a space of floating detention and incarceration.

Adapting the eco-pedagogical phrase “Il mare inizia da qui” (the sea starts here), the two-channel film uses disjunctures of sound and image to produce an immersion in the sea whilst on land and on the land from the position of the sea. With these disjunctures I will reflect on how different actors – asylum seekers and activists challenging detention practices – perceive their relationship with the sea. I ask whether it is also possible to say that from the land ‘il naufragio inizia da qui’? or does the shipwreck start here?