Page - 91 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Tony Kushner | Lampedusa and the Migrant Crisis 91 tion as possible and to restore some sense of individuality contrasts with the dominant artistic confrontation with the migrant presence as represented by Lampedusa. Only in Lustgarten’s play are the migrants given agency. With just two actors, the words of the migrant Modibo are reported by the fisherman Stefano, but it is ultimately the former that restore the latter’s faith in humanity after the death he has confronted in the Mediterranean, night after night. In Fire At Sea the focus, as with Terraferma, is on everyday life on Lampedusa. Rosi’s docu- mentary shows how in very recent years the life of the islanders has become separated from that of the migrants who are rescued by the coastguard vessels and then immediately transferred to the detention centre. Only the local doctor has everyday contact, his testimony detailing his daily contact with the dying and seriously ill provides a powerful humanitarian bond. More happily we watch as he carries out an ultrasound examination of an African expecting a baby – with no midwives on the island, today there are only migrant births on Lampedusa. But we do not know the name of this woman, her background and the circumstances of her pregnancy. In Terrafirma a young migrant gives birth in a private home in Lampedusa, and we are at least made aware of the trauma that led to her pregnancy and the householder who is sheltering her reluctantly is forced to recognise the motherhood they have in common. Finally she accepts that the migrant has a name and a history. From the Lampedusa doctor’s surgery, Rosi takes us on a coastguard/navy rescue of a migrant ship and we watch as most of those on board this pathetic vessel are saved. We also witness those that have already died from dehydration or fume inhalation from journeying the twenty first version of ‘steerage’ as the doctor perspicaciously perceives it, summoning up also the memory of the slave ships. The witnessing does not stop there – we see the last moments of those for whom rescue came a fraction too late. There is humour in Fire at Sea as we encounter the hypochondria of a young boy, Samuele who encounters the always patient and so decent doctor. But Rosi insists that we connect the everyday of Samuele (who is too prone to seasick- ness to follow his father in a fishing expedition) with the ‘normality’ of plucking dead or nearly dead bodies from the sea. It remains that we begin to piece together the family dynamics of Samuele but do not learn the names or background of any of the migrants we encounter in the film, whether on the ship, in the surgery or the detention centre. In the first days of liberation, the victim’s bodies in Belsen and other concentration camps were presented to the outside world to prove the evils of Nazism. It took many years to recon- stitute their lives before the Holocaust or to imagine, for the survivors, that they would have a meaningful life after it. In the twenty first century, our collective horror at the dead migrant body, most powerfully illustrated in the case of three year old Alan Kurdi in September 2015, can shock the complacent into action. But until we can see the victims as fully human with all the frailties, contradictions and difficulties that requires, focusing on death and suffering alone is not enough to ensure long term solutions to the problem of migration and the global inequa- lity that underpins it – or of supporting the migrants to rebuild their lives beyond initial rescue. Hate speech and the concept of migrant illegality have, as outlined in this article, a long history – bureaucratically and socially – illustrated by the ease with which prejudice has re-established itself in Europe after the initial surge of sympathy following the Kurdi family tragedy. Giacomo of Askavusa states that for their collective project the ‘M’ stands for memory. ‘We choose what we remember and what we forget. We want to actively engage with memory as