Tuesday, September 23, 7:30 PM PWYC
@ CineCycle, 129 Spadina Ave.
Co-presented with the Department of Geography, University of Toronto
Part of Fall 2014
Liquid Traces offers a synthetic reconstruction of the events concerning what is known as the “left-to-die boat” case. In 2011, 72 passengers left the Libyan coast heading in the direction of the island of Lampedusa on board a small rubber boat. After sending several distress signals, they were left to drift with no assistance for 14 days in NATO’s maritime surveillance area, despite repeated interactions with other vessels including at least one military helicopter visit and an encounter with a military ship. As a result, only 9 people survived.
In producing this reconstruction, research has used against the grain of the “sensorium of the sea”—the multiple remote sensing devices used to record and read the sea’s depth and surface. It turned data generated through surveillance into evidence of responsibility for the crime of nonassistance.
Directed by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, it is part of the research project Forensic Architecture, funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
