Insabbiati
2009
The title Insabbiati originally refers to’ caught in the sand’ (like fish out of water) or creatures of the sand and was originally coined as a reference to those Italian soldiers who, having participated in Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1936, chose to stay on after Italy’s defeat at the end of the second world war. The term has also been used by a number of writers as a metaphor for displacement, cultural isolation and exile – conditions that rule much of humankind.
Insabbiati a collaborative project with musician Himanshu Desai is a visual and auditory portrait of the city of London. This installation consists of two parts: Video projection on polycarbonate roofing sheets filled with rice. Polycarbonate roofing sheet is commonly used in construction of temporary structures or parasitic architecture. The Melody of Migration – a musical composition created by feeding migration census data from various London boroughs into a music generation software. The music served as soundtrack for images of London city, its multi-cultural inhabitants and its varied neighbourhoods.
