LIVEBOAT - Chapter 5 by Plastique Fantastique
The project addresses the ongoing refugee tragedy in front of borders.
LIVEBOAT - Chapter 5,
48 Stunden Neukölln, Berlin, June 2015
Taking his trident in both hands,
Poseidon stirs the sea into a fury
and lashes up rain and squall.
Mast and sail are torn away,
Odysseus is thrown overboard
and buried under a wall of water.
When he emerges gasping and sputtering,
he somehow manages to clamber back aboard.
A goddess, Leucothea, appears to him in the form of a bird.
She counsels him to swim for it.
“Take my veil, tie it around your waist as a charm against drowning.
When you reach shore, be sure to throw it back into the sea.”
- Homer, Odyssey, Chapter Five
LIVEBOAT - Chapter 5 addresses the ongoing refugee tragedy in front of our borders and offers space for communication and discourses. After a long odyssey, an oversized lifeboat runs ashore on Tempelhof Airport. Inside the boat, multilingual extracts from Homer's Odyssey as well as fragments of refugee experiences are intertwined to a sound carpet.
