Liquid Violence

Since 2011, Forensic Oceanography has been conducting analytical research on spatial and aesthetic factors that have transformed the Mediterranean Sea into a militarized border area where countless migrants have lost their lives. Liquid Violence brings together four different lines of research conducted over the years: the first, Liquid Traces (2014), describes the route of a boat abandoned at sea in 2011 during NATO’s military intervention in Libya; Death by Rescue (2016) reconstructs the lethal effects of the decisions taken by Italy and the European Union to limit search and rescue missions at sea, and Mare Clausum (2018) investigates the two-fold strategy of closing off the sea currently adopted by the Italian government, which, on the one hand, criminalizes NGO rescue actions and, on the other, supports actions by Libyan authorities to prevent and intercept the departure of migrants. Lastly, The Crime of Rescue (2018) offers a counter-investigation of the seizure of the Iuventa, an NGO rescue ship. Each of these projects seeks to analyze and contextualize a specific form of violence perpetrated in a border zone and to trace the political anatomy of the various, ever-changing border control systems and (lack of) rescue at sea, taking into consideration the dramatic consequences of these practices on the lives of migrants.