Overview
16°52.2’ East, 41°07.6’ North was originally commissioned in May 2001 by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage for the Arte Maggio, an international arts festival in Apulia, Italy. Inspired by a year spent at sea and by my return home after many years over seas, I decided to draw upon the Mediterranean for the project. I began my research with language, first with the dialect of my own region and then with those of the neighboring regions. I collected video interviews and photographs of people whose lives were deeply entrenched in the Mediterranean and were as rich and diverse as the subject matter itself: Balkan refugees, Italian fishermen, old ladies who hand made pasta, war survivors, Albanian child prostitutes and North African immigrants. As their stories unfolded, the ebb and flow of their experiences seemed to take on the current of the Mediterranean. Inspired by this, I transposed the sound of the voices into a soundtrack of the crashing waves of the Mediterranean, meshing the people and the place into one body.
Public video installation, performance, audio documentary in collaboration with Radio Canale 100, Secondary Fine Art School Bari, Fine Arts Academy Bari, Institute & Music and Music Therapy Bari, University for Mediterranean studies Renè Cassin, no profit cultural association ACLI and Publicarb. Project sponsored by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage Bari.
