Conversation XLXI


Appunti del passaggio and an Occasional Accent: Storia di storie 

A (performative) evening with Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo and Alessandra Eramo

Performance, screening (43’15 min, Italian, English subtitles) and discussion 

Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo’s film Appunti del passaggio (2014–16) reconstructs forgotten episodes related to migration from the South to the North of Europe in the 1960s. For tonight’s event the artists further developed a performance-based discussion in collaboration with the performer Alessandra Eramo, which will serve as an introduction to the screening. By investigating how the risk of contamination has been used as a strategy to control immigration and the legality of border crossing, the artists retrace the trajectories of some of those who made the passage, unfolding first-hand accounts that manifest a counter-memory of migration from southern Italy to Switzerland during the post-war ‘economic miracle’. Through a series of a series of transitions – from storytelling to listening, from one language to another – the artists raise questions in regards to the widespread perception of migrants as ‘abject’ bodies while concentrating on the biopolitical apparatuses that shape subjectivity and collective experience.

www.parallelhistories.org

Saturday, October 21, 7pm

Corner College 
Kochstrasse 1
8004 Zürich