Intersecting Mediterranean(s)

Intersecting Mediterranean(s)

Daniela Medina Poch and Elizabeth Gallón Droste

Multimedia installation and video

4 x 5 x 3 m, and 10 minutes

Calabria, Italy, and Berlin, Germany, 2021–2022

Supported by Marebox Project: 3D Research, Atlantis Consulting
and SAVVY Contemporary The Laboratory of Form-Ideas

The waters of the present are a living archive of the relations they sustain with humans and more-than-humans in a complex web of entangled temporalities. They contain information about the places and bodies they have engaged with. What are the myths, stories, and imaginaries of the Mediterranean that are currently being woven together?

Under a Western gaze of the planet, the Mediterranean, as its name indicates, was conceived as the center of the known planet. As a fluid space, it has been a projected surface of contested and disputed futures through which systematic violence has been effectuated by privileged nations towards different life forms.

Transforming heterogeneity into homogeneity, the Mediterranean(s) and its life flows have been appropriated by the Western European world as commodities. Guided by the question as to what is currently at the center and what deserves our urgent attention, we seek to contribute to displacing the Eurocentric gaze on the Mediterranean. To echo some of its overshadowed histories, we approach the Mediterranean(s) Sea in plural as a saltwater body that connects a network of freshwater rivers that flow into one other, navigating borders and coasts at varying depths and surfaces. As an interconnected body with multiple agents—human and more-than-human—, it cooperates and configures its waterscape. Our aim is to recognize the systematically invisibilized imaginaries of the Mediterranean and to explore the latter as a complex region to contribute to a wider re-assembling of the identities and imaginaries around the Mediterranean cultures in its plurality.

Intersecting Mediterraneans(s) has been developed through three formats or configurations which are in dialogue

Intersecting Mediterranean(s) is a research piece and installation that involves 36 meters of fabric and a multichannel audio series. The fabric connects the river with the sea, and as a receptive membrane that carries memories, myths, relationships, and affects that nourish the Mediterranean, it becomes a living archive of this encounter. The textile gives visibility to the current; as it registers the direction and manifests the pace, it is activated by intersecting voices from the Nahr Ibrahim, Po, Isonzo/Soča, Neretva, Cem/Cijevna, Düden, Kishon, Nile, Medjerda, Chelif, Moulouya, Ebro, and the Rhône rivers, among others. Around the fabric is an audiovisual installation involving two video performances, presented separated from one another and played in a loop. Intersecting Mediterranean(s) from its Regional Rivers aims to acknowledge the specificities of contexts and life flows that nourish the Mediterranean.

The second piece, Intersecting Mediterranean(s) 2022, is a 10-minute video that contains images of the fabric in movement in its flow from the Lao River to the Mediterranean Sea and an acoustic composition of the stories that were gathered.

Intersecting Mediterraneans: A Sonic Submergence is a digital configuration of ‘Intersecting Mediterraneans’ commissioned by EXNUNC which invites visitors to dive into and interact with an apparently chaotic sonic landscape, which weaves together fragments of shattered cumulative repertoires of memories, affects, and pieces of knowledge, of both waters and lands. EXN Lagoon is curated by Chiara Cartuccia. https://www.ex-nunc.org/intersecting-mediterraneans

On the audios the following female voices have contributed: Boushra Adi, Martha Ardila, Shiran Berkobich, Zahra Berramdane زهرة بنرمضان, Abla Eloudghiri, Lucía Gallón, Juditt Gatt, Miriam Gatt, Francisca Hartmann, Lea Mijaçika, Dina Mimi, Francesca Onagro, Ivana Papic, Lara Tabet, Kaliroi Tsolakidou, Blanca Utrillas, Duna Vallès