The Crime of Rescue

Since 2011, Forensic Oceanography (Lorenzo Pezzani & Charles Heller) have combined testimonies of human rights violations with digital technologies such as satellite imagery, vessel tracking data, and geospatial mapping to critically investigate the militarized border regime in the Mediterranean Sea. Their work attempts to document the violence perpetrated against migrants at sea and to challenge the regime of (in)visibility imposed by surveillance on this contested frontier. The installation Blaming the Rescuers revolves around two reports, Death by Rescue (2016) and Blaming the Rescuers (2017), both of which document the targeting of proactive search and rescue at sea—whether operated by states or by NGOs—as a means of imposing the EU’s policy of containment. The reports demonstrate the lethal consequences of this deliberate policy.