On arriving in Falcone-Borsellino airport, the Italian border officer did not look up when I passed him my passport. Behind the glass booth I could see that he along with a second colleague were fixed to a phone streaming a football match. A ‘friendly’ I assumed given Italys failure to qualify for the Fifa World Cup, about to commence in Russia. I passed over the border with the overt reminder of capitalism and corruption’s influence over the movement of individuals. On my Ryanair flight largely occupied by art world types I would see sporting Manifesta Preview lanyards in the following days. These lanyards and tote bags acting as passports further highlight our privilege as tourists, temporarily navigating the city armed with matching programmes and smart phones.
Poitras’s video installation highlighting the growing presence of the American Military bases throughout Sicily, largely operating drone strikes on North Africa and the Middle East. Poitras’s film uses ariel footage of Sigonella base captured by blazingly taking their (camera) drone above the site seemingly abandoned on a bank holiday.
John Gerrard,Untitled (near Parndorf, Austria), 2018
Photo via. Manifesta.org
A computer simulation of the section of motorway in Austria where an abandoned truck was found in 2015, containing the bodies of 71 migrants. The text accompanying the work describes the artist journeying to the site to document the empty road and police markings, locating it via news images. This process speaks more of action and empathy than the cold and detached computer simulation of this site of mass atrocity.
Peng! Collective, Become an Escape Agent! (Help a refugee cross borders), 2015
Peng! Collective’s video installation works from the point of privilege of EU citizens as mobile citizens but offers a way to use that privilege for good through a network in which those with the freedom of mobility can offer to smuggle asylum seekers across the border as they return from their holidays. Cleverly pitched to a tourist audience in a biennale context this work hits home in suggesting real action an individual can offer to the migration crisis.
