The Journey

"While sailing, I began to think of the ship as an ear, capable of capturing reality both above and below the water (...)" Rossella Biscotti in Ocean Archive, 2021.

In 2010, Rossella Biscotti won the Michelangelo Prize: a 20-tonne block of white marble carved from the famous Carrara quarries in Italy. Eleven years later, she sent the block out to sea on a symbolic voyage, from the quarries to the Sicilian Channel, via Italy, Malta, Tunisia and Libya. The route was meticulously mapped out, past archaeological sites, shipwrecks, the migration paths of humans and marine animals, gas pipelines and geological formations across the Mediterranean. The three-day journey was preceded by years of research and conversations with fishermen, sailors, activists, researchers and people from the region. Finally, the block was lowered into the sea at a precise point in the Sicily Channel Rift Zone – one of the oldest zones of the continental crust, where the African and Eurasian plates overlap.

The Journey is a sound installation that brings this itinerary to life through the roar of the ship's engine, the sound of the sea, the songs of sailors or fishermen and through earthenware jars (amphora). The ship acts as a sound device, exposing sensitive zones in the Mediterranean like military areas, the arbitrary borders of oil and gas fields, and migration routes. Recordings of natural sounds and distress signals are interlaced with testimonies about the ongoing tragedies faced by migrating people in the Mediterranean.