Intermundia by Ana Dana Beros

14th International Architecture Exhibition
la Biennale di Venezia
June 7th — November 23rd 2014


Intermundia research project questions alternating border-scapes of trans-European and intra-European migration. The focus is the Italian island of Lampedusa, metonymy for contemporary Western condition of confinement. Dominant discourses on illegal migration obscure the role of international migration as regulatory labour market tool. It is important to stress that migrants must be conceived primarily as workers, not only as immigrants. It seems that, in our times of constant mobility, involuntary territorial shifts of the precarious workers is parallel to the detention of undesired migrants.

Instead of observing Lampedusa as a consolidated institution of “the waiting room”, as jailed zone in the middle of conflict, Intermundia attempts a post-human perspective in order to investigate the ambivalent state of “in-betweenness”. Aware of the impossibility of cultural translation of such a condition, the understanding of the Other, Intermundia challenges visitors to immerse into coffin-like light and sound installation. Inducing “Verfremdungseffekt”, the project asks for solemnity and re-action, and not simply empathy.

Intermundia research book was published in January 2015.
Format: 22 x 16 cm
Print run: 250
ISBN: 978-953-58427-0-5


* Intermundia was awarded with 'special mention' as a research project of the section Monditalia.