The List of 34,361 documented deaths of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants who have lost their lives within or on the borders of Europe since 1993. Documentation as of 5 May 2018 by UNITED for Intercultural Action. Facilitated by Banu Cennetoğlu. Presented at Great George Street, Liverpool Biennial 2018. Photo: Mark McNulty

 

A 280m wall composed of columns and rows of a giant excel spreadsheet greet us on Great George Street in Liverpool. It’s not exactly beautiful and it doesn’t appear to be the result of any creative impulse. Actually, these large white pages are thorn and the general aspect of the hoarding is of an abandoned site.

However, the institutional context of the Liverpool Biennial and the signature of Banu Cennetoğlu (b. 1970, Ankara, Turkey) turn it into an artistic piece, included on the Biennial “Exhibitions”. Notwithstanding, in an interview given to The Guardian in June, Cennetoğlu refuses the idea of “aestheticizing it”, stressing that “you cannot represent this kind of darkness through art”.

“It” refers to The List – an excel file with information on migrants who died trying to reach Europe, or already inside its borders. The List is curated by UNITED for Intercultural Action, an “European Network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees”, and Banu Cennetoğlu, who has been working with The List since 2002. Both UNITED and Cennetoğlu decided to leave the Liverpool project in its “current state”, after the second time The List was ripped of, last August, “as a manifestation and reminder of this systematic violence exercised against people.”

The Istanbul based artist had a major exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, in London, from June to August this year: “Cennetoğlu’s work incorporates methods of mapping, collecting and archiving in order to question and challenge the politics of memory, as well as the distribution and consumption of information […] Through her work, Cennetoğlu raises complex questions concerning the effects of geographic borders on bodies and how systems of governance influence everyday experience […]” – we can read in the artist’s presentation on the Gallery’s website.

On the quoted interview to The Guardian, Bannu Cennetoğlu tells the story of her involvement with The List, and how she has been dedicating the last 16 years of her life “carrying it”, giving visibility to The List and making people encounter it “in all its terrible rawness and cumulative power”, wrote journalist Charlotte Higgins.

 

The List of 34,361 documented deaths of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants who have lost their lives within or on the borders of Europe since 1993. Documentation as of 5 May 2018 by UNITED for Intercultural Action. Facilitated by Banu Cennetoğlu. Presented at Great George Street, Liverpool Biennial 2018. Photo: Thierry Bal

 

Presented as a newspaper supplement, stickers on ATMs, downloadable PDF, posters on train stations, among other forms, the real power of such crude object is yet to be defined. The List has names, places and dates, in an attempt to register singular lives. However, one might ask if it isn't just another way to make the individual get lost into the anonymous group of a collective category of deceased migrants.

I believe it’s not. It gives the public a much-needed opportunity for mourning, for compassion, as well as an opportunity to know. The interconnection between visibility and knowledge is well represented in the Spanish language: the word for teaching is the same as for showing, enseñar. When displaying this names and facts, The List is also telling about people.

On the 20th of June, the World Refugee Day, the British newspaper The Guardian, published and distributed The List, counting 34,361 migrants and refugees reported to have died attempting to reach safe Europe since 1993 (the present version of the List was closed on May the 5th). The toll is certainly higher than shown.

Before receiving the paper version of the supplement, I opened the link on The Guardian’s webpage and a 56 page PDF file with narrow lines and several columns automatically downloaded into my computer, imposing itself into my day and being incorporated into my reality. 34,361 documented deaths. Perplexed and distraught I tried to receive and incorporate the dead.

Will I be able to do it with the living?

That is a question that a committed artistic citizenship might find a possible answer to.

 

Inês Espada Vieira

3rd of October 2018

(This text was written exactly 5 years after the Lampedusa sinking)

 

The List of 34,361 documented deaths of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants who have lost their lives within or on the borders of Europe since 1993. Documentation as of 5 May 2018 by UNITED for Intercultural Action. Facilitated by Banu Cennetoğlu. Presented at Great George Street, Liverpool Biennial 2018. Photo: Mark McNulty

 

 

You can find more about The List and UNITED for Intercultural Action:

unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu

facebook.com/UNITEDAgainstRefugeeDeaths

listofdeaths@unitedagainstracism.org

Twitter @UNITED__Network #AgainstRefugeeDeaths

Campaign contact: Geert Ates +31-6-48808808