Radio Papesse

A soundpiece by Marco Stefanelli with the voices of Azim, Abdul Karim, Farah
Recordings from the archives of Frontex, the Italian Coast Guards and Médicins Sans Frontières.
 

Late into the night, a fleet of rusting fishing boats and rubber dinghies are setting sail to the Old Continent from the beach of Zuwara, Libya, Africa. The land on which the European Union extended its tentacles till five decades ago. Today the Mediterranean has become a border fenced off by barbed wires through which thousands of people can never cross.

Tonight is another night in which countless innocent people lose their lives. It’s just another night, another dinghy being swallowed by the waves, vanishing into the soundless, gloomy Mediterranean Sea. We are left with nothing but heart-wrenching screams, powerless arms, freezing cold, splashing waves, and troubled waters. When the Sun comes up tomorrow, politicians will hang their head in shame preparing new declarations for the TV shows, more promises for the newspaper's columns, different news to spread throughout radio speakers. But when the urge is gone, the deads will be forever forgotten.

Here you can follow the script in English. 

Marco Stefanelli is a radio producer. Since 2012 he's been working on migration issues. He produced radio documentaries and cross-media projects in Malta, Melilla (Spain), Bulgaria and West Bank; he's working with a group of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants to develop projects of participatory narrative mapping and soundwalks in Rome. He's part of community radio project Radio Ghetto in Puglia. Since 2014 he has experimented with the use and manipulation of voices, sounds, archive audio files and interviews, in site specific installations and sound art projects.