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Since 2011, Forensic Oceanography has been critically investigating the spatial and aesthetic conditions that have turned the Mediterranean into a militarised border zone, leading to the death of large numbers of migrants. Liquid Violence brings together three investigations conducted over this period. Liquid Traces (2014) charts the trajectory of a boat abandoned at sea during NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya; Death by Rescue (2016) reconstructs the lethal effects of the decision made by Italy and the EU to cut back search and rescue activities at sea; Mare Clausum (2018) concerns the two-pronged strategy currently implemented by the Italian government to close off the sea: on the one hand, criminalising the rescue activities of NGOs, on the other, supporting Libyan actions to prevent and intercept departures. Each of these works seeks to analyse and contest a particular mode of border violence, all the while drawing a political anatomy of the fluctuating patterns of border control and (non-) assistance at sea, and their dramatic consequences for the lives of migrants.
In the Moorish Palazzo Forcella De Seta, Forensic Oceanography’s deeply affecting Liquid Violence (2018) gathers data from Mediterranean migration and the effects of militarized maritime borders and weaponizes it for brute emotional force.
– Frieze, 19 June 2018