refugee too much
Refugee too much
Having listened to a talk by Karina Horsti, which she gave at University of Melbourne, I have felt compelled to write this piece. In her research, Horsti poses the question about the memorialisation of the tragedy that is happening on the shores of southern Europe: the perilous crossing of waters by people seeking asylum and the policy of European governments to deny it.
Today I listened to a talk by Karina Horsti from Finland hosted by Nikos Papastergiadis from the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. In her research Horsti poses the question about the memorialisation of the tragedy that is in course on the shores of Southern Europe: the perilous crossing of waters by people seeking asylum and the tendency of European governments to deny it. She brought attention to the phenomenon of European museums and artists, including Ai Wei Wei, exhibiting items from the wreckages — like pieces of wood from the boats and life-jackets — as a response to the tragedy. However, as she states: "Exhibitions that document past violence and wrongs are often used in countries going through transitional justice and reconciliation. However, since the so-called “refugee crisis” is not over, it is important to ask: “What does an approach that memorializes on-going suffering and death mean politically and ethically."
In the South-east of Sicily, the organisers of a community get-together moved to cancel it on the wave of news of yet another tragedy at sea. It seemed to me that the emotion generated by the event was translated into mourning — but for whom? The memorialisation of tragedies, at least in Italy, often takes place at the site of the tragedy, like a roadside. In the case of refugees, it is located at the point along the coastline where the tragedy occurred. At one such site in the South-east of Sicily a monument has been erected and a service is held each year. This, as the refugee crisis continues, with the ripple effect of each new tragedy felt as far north as Scandinavia.
For an event of tragic proportions to have been assimilated, for the relics to have become testimony and for artists to have made art referencing the suffering, the mourning and the recollections of those involved, can time be disregarded, as Horsti, suggests? In the list of artistic interventions that Horsti enumerated in her talk, it would seem that time has effectively been eliminated. What is created as a result is instantaneous ‘emotional distance’ from the tragic unfolding of the events.
While governments seek political control over the situation, the European people, I would venture to say, who perceive the tragedy too great to bear, against which they are powerless to intervene as individuals, react by seeking such emotional control. In response to the influx of refugees fuelled by a host of historical, economic and political reasons in the country of origin, not excluding the natural movement of people along routes that are established by sociohistorical connections between places, and the subsequent tragedy enacted at sea while attempting the crossing, and in response to inadequate government presence, as well as the shortcomings of humanitarian aid, emotional control becomes a formality. The formalisation of mourning drives the enactment of memorialisation contemporaneous to the course of events, that is while people are still dying en-route to the border.
While memorialisation unfolds in the museums and coastlines, it is noteworthy that it is not the refugees creating cultural content but European residents, those in a state of disbelief at what is happening at the edges of the European continent. If the ordinary European is attempting to deal with what is taking place on the border, if humanitarian intentions fall short when the suffering of others is objectified, a look at daily life in the south-eastern Sicilian city of Syracuse shows that all is not what it seems. Here, volunteers from the local community sign-up to support under-aged refugees who are without family, taking on the duty to oversee essential needs: accommodation, school, welfare. Many refugees have become residents, working, offering skills and labour, all the while making sense of a foreign place, with its food, customs and way of life. The town of Riace in Calabria is an example where public policy, through the efforts of the Mayor, has fostered the assimilation of refugees and other relocated people, in an effort to restore dignity, a resilient life and a renewed sense of home.
In another part of the world, the island nation of Australia is dealing with a similar (politicised) humanitarian crisis. Greens Senator, Nick McKim, writing in The Guardian provides a glimpse: “We simply do not know how many boats have sunk and people drowned before they were noticed by Australian authorities. Or how many people have been forced back to the countries they are fleeing to face death, torture or persecution. All that has been achieved is the removal of the drownings from our television screens.”
In Nick McKim’s comment, courage is what the Australian prime minister is unable to muster. Back in Europe, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, a retired doctor becomes the embodiment of courage and hope. While volunteering at the site of a recent tragedy at sea he recounted that while surveying the bodies of the people who had not survived the crossing, he noticed one that neither moved nor breathed, but something about “colour” struck him. The body was flown to a hospital in Palermo. The woman survived.
If collectively, the European people take time to look, perhaps a whole new story might be waiting to be told, and the memoralisation could start to have meaning. I’m thinking about that young man, who ‘defeated’ by the enormity of the crossing, and once he has recovered his senses with renewed faith in life, he tells me about the mango trees in his home country, his parents tending them, and the dream he has to lighten their burden.
© Silvana Tuccio, November 2017
In the South-east of Sicily, the organisers of a community get-together moved to cancel it on the wave of news of yet another tragedy at sea. It seemed to me that the emotion generated by the event was translated into mourning — but for whom? The memorialisation of tragedies, at least in Italy, often takes place at the site of the tragedy, like a roadside. In the case of refugees, it is located at the point along the coastline where the tragedy occurred. At one such site in the South-east of Sicily a monument has been erected and a service is held each year. This, as the refugee crisis continues, with the ripple effect of each new tragedy felt as far north as Scandinavia.
For an event of tragic proportions to have been assimilated, for the relics to have become testimony and for artists to have made art referencing the suffering, the mourning and the recollections of those involved, can time be disregarded, as Horsti, suggests? In the list of artistic interventions that Horsti enumerated in her talk, it would seem that time has effectively been eliminated. What is created as a result is instantaneous ‘emotional distance’ from the tragic unfolding of the events.
While governments seek political control over the situation, the European people, I would venture to say, who perceive the tragedy too great to bear, against which they are powerless to intervene as individuals, react by seeking such emotional control. In response to the influx of refugees fuelled by a host of historical, economic and political reasons in the country of origin, not excluding the natural movement of people along routes that are established by sociohistorical connections between places, and the subsequent tragedy enacted at sea while attempting the crossing, and in response to inadequate government presence, as well as the shortcomings of humanitarian aid, emotional control becomes a formality. The formalisation of mourning drives the enactment of memorialisation contemporaneous to the course of events, that is while people are still dying en-route to the border.
While memorialisation unfolds in the museums and coastlines, it is noteworthy that it is not the refugees creating cultural content but European residents, those in a state of disbelief at what is happening at the edges of the European continent. If the ordinary European is attempting to deal with what is taking place on the border, if humanitarian intentions fall short when the suffering of others is objectified, a look at daily life in the south-eastern Sicilian city of Syracuse shows that all is not what it seems. Here, volunteers from the local community sign-up to support under-aged refugees who are without family, taking on the duty to oversee essential needs: accommodation, school, welfare. Many refugees have become residents, working, offering skills and labour, all the while making sense of a foreign place, with its food, customs and way of life. The town of Riace in Calabria is an example where public policy, through the efforts of the Mayor, has fostered the assimilation of refugees and other relocated people, in an effort to restore dignity, a resilient life and a renewed sense of home.
In another part of the world, the island nation of Australia is dealing with a similar (politicised) humanitarian crisis. Greens Senator, Nick McKim, writing in The Guardian provides a glimpse: “We simply do not know how many boats have sunk and people drowned before they were noticed by Australian authorities. Or how many people have been forced back to the countries they are fleeing to face death, torture or persecution. All that has been achieved is the removal of the drownings from our television screens.”
In Nick McKim’s comment, courage is what the Australian prime minister is unable to muster. Back in Europe, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, a retired doctor becomes the embodiment of courage and hope. While volunteering at the site of a recent tragedy at sea he recounted that while surveying the bodies of the people who had not survived the crossing, he noticed one that neither moved nor breathed, but something about “colour” struck him. The body was flown to a hospital in Palermo. The woman survived.
If collectively, the European people take time to look, perhaps a whole new story might be waiting to be told, and the memoralisation could start to have meaning. I’m thinking about that young man, who ‘defeated’ by the enormity of the crossing, and once he has recovered his senses with renewed faith in life, he tells me about the mango trees in his home country, his parents tending them, and the dream he has to lighten their burden.
© Silvana Tuccio, November 2017