KLITSA ANTONIOU: Atlantropa-X
Malta National Pavilion
la BIENNALE ARTE di VENEZIA 2019
MALETH/HAVEN/PORT: Heterotopias of Evocation
la BIENNALE ARTE di VENEZIA 2019
MALETH/HAVEN/PORT: Heterotopias of Evocation
Atlantropa, was a gigantic engineering and colonization idea devised by the German architect Herman Sörgel in the 1920s. He proposed to form land bridges between Africa and Europe by damming and partially draining the Mediterranean, allowing millions of Europeans to find a new life in what would become the southern zone of a Eurafrican supercontinent.
Today, more than ever, the Atlantropa scheme seems relevant as it is suddenly fortified by contemporary intensity to remind us of the limits on freedom (migrants and refugees) and the destiny of the inhabitants of this area (surviving amid military, political, economic, social complexities/contrasts, migrations and fluid topographies of rejected, forgotten, unseen and silent memories).
This project in the context of the Malta Pavilion will aim to conceptually and artistically join the two islands of the Mediterranean, Malta and Cyprus, by offering glimpses on the utopian drives and the dystopian fallouts and offer insights into the associations between place, artistic practice and expression.