Marina Gioti: Sounding the Silent World
The ocean is often represented as a purifying vessel, a place of catharsis from what is dangerous, dirty and morally contaminating; a convenient rug under which humanity has been sweeping whatever is unwanted and needs to be hidden. The sea floor can only reflect human activity and carry its destructive footprint, its ‘everlasting’ materials and its garbage. Shipwrecks and abandoned ships alongside ocean acidification, and the dumping of waste, are among the biggest sources of marine pollution globally.
“Sounding the Silent World” is a research project that will explore the problem of shipwreck pollution through an interdisciplinary investigation of the past and current state of wrecked vessels in order to activate a discourse and speculation on their future. As a case study, the project will center around an —informal— ship graveyard in the sea area between Elefsina, Perama and Salamina in West Attica. Situated around the archaeological site of Eleusis, an ancient sanctuary and ritual center —home to the Eleusinian mysteries and mythological entrance to the Underworld, the coastal town of Elefsina hosts on its seafloor an incongruous archaeological park where ruins of a ‘deeper’ past intersperse with ruins of the present in a catastrophic cohabitation.
The project entails an interdisciplinary investigation across media, that will explore the confusing materialities of recently wrecked ships through an archaeological interpretation of an environmental issue. In order to explore oceanic degradation, but to also reflect upon what we consider as heritage, the project will address the following questions:
Can the ‘underworld’ of shipwrecks be employed as a reason and a metaphor to explore current and pressing issues of decay, decadence, ephemerality and failure? Can the archaeological examination of our-own-time through the ruins we produce and inherit to posterity help us approach contemporary sociopolitical and ecological phenomena and incite community-led corrective action?
