21 August 2023 TURBULENCE, ARTS DEPARTMENT, AIX-MARSEILLE UNIVERSITY
Meeting organized by Catherine Benoît, EHESS/Iméra Chair 2023
Guests: Eliane Aberdam, Professor of Music and Composition at Rhode Island University (USA); Sophie Beau, Director of SOS Méditerranée; Nassuf Djailani, writer; Pauline Le Liard, Former Project Manager, La Cimade Mayotte; Constance Moreteau, scientific coordinator Iméra; Ben Amir Saadi, journalist; Amahada Smis, songwriter and slammer; M’baé «Soly» Mohamed, songwriter and slammer; Ali Zamir, writer.
Credit: Jean-Baptiste Sauvage | Horizons
The Mozambique Channel and the Mediterranean are two marine cemeteries where tens of thousands of dead and missing lie. How to talk about these deaths and disappearances? How to pay tribute to them? How to prevent shipwrecks? If the Mediterranean context is known, the Mozambique Channel is much less. Both invisibilized and poorly studied, shipwrecks in the Comoros archipelago are evoked by writers and songwriters. «Exiles Without Voice: Deaths and Disappearances in the Mozambique Channel and the Mediterranean» is the first literary, musical and activist meeting that, with an emphasis on the Mozambique Channel, will endeavour to trace the transformation of these maritime spaces originally places of intellectual, cultural, religious and commercial exchanges into mass graves. Writers, songwriters and representatives of humanitarian associations will present the aesthetic choices and activists that have led to their putting into words this deadly reality.
