2000

marble, steel, audio

Passaggio d'acqua (Water Passage) is an installation designed in 2000, inspired by the stories of migrants who, in those years, were beginning to cross the Mediterranean Sea from south to north. The work consists of a steel arch tube - about 15 metres high - which after a 270-degree arch settles into the concrete base that supports it. The tube’s open end remains suspended at about 2 meters from the ground and it finishes with an element that looks like a shower head. It is not water that runs through the arch but an electric impulse, in the form of light, sound and words: these are the voices and stories of Kurdish illegal immigrants, of the journey crossing the Adriatic or Ionian seas to land on Italian shores. The sound of water accompanied by voices is in the background, a sort of "soundtrack", but it also gives life to the idea of setting up mobile and temporary spaces to accommodate clandestine immigrants, whose testimonies are collected by the Stalker Laboratory. 

The shower introduces the tube, but it also completes it. The arch sways with the wind. Its large dimension is almost an invitation to ponder on the fact that the small dimension of our domestic showers is an individual space, with the intimacy of a daily gesture, which is not accessible to everyone. The tragedy of shipwrecked people: without water to quench their thirst, however surrounded by that of the sea, is explained by means of a shower that does not alleviate a hot summer’s discomfort, but tells of many others. The work was conceived together with the elaboration of the installation "Solid Sea”, promoted by the Multiplicity group and presented at Documenta Kassel in 2002.

STEFANO BOERI