Displaced Witness is a site specific multisensory and embodied VR artwork that asks the viewer to bear spatial witness to the people and landscape of Lesvos, then the unofficial gate for refugees trying to cross into Citadel Europe. Using tools created to take precise, 3D data recordings, ScanLAB scans and shares the human side of that data - bringing it back to our physicality - and in doing so asks audiences to consider the kind of numbers and rhetoric these people are often reduced to in news and reports. The scanner cannot look away - neither should we.
‘Displaced Witness’ takes place on a homogeneous surface of transplanted 1 meter by 1 meter textures from the island of Lesvos, digitally re-enacted from 3D scan data. Audience members are invited to take off their shoes, and walk in the path of their neighbors as they hear the Lesvos coastline, pebbles crunching beneath their feet. From the headset, a visual testimony emerges from a whirling cloud of points - portraits and landscapes recorded in 2016 in Lesvos. Displaced Witness offers four scenes - the arrival beaches of Skala Sikamineas, an ad-hoc camp outside the official Moria Registration Centre, the Lighthouse on the Korakas peninsula, and the vast piles of life vests at the edge of the town of Mithimna.
ARRIVALS
The beaches of Skala Sikamineas are the point of arrival for many boats from Turkey. Boats are often guided in by volunteer lifeguards having been directed toward several unofficial volunteer camps who provide assistance, warm clothes, food and a friendly welcome to those who make the journey. Prior to the establishment of these camps and the process of guiding arriving vessels in, boats would land at perilous locations with those on board having to walk miles across rugged terrain to find civilisation. This more structured welcome has averted thousands of possible shipwrecks and saved many, many lives.
CAMP
This ad hoc camp was established by volunteers and aid agencies outside the official Moria Registration Centre (now the Moria Detention Centre). When scanned in 2015 the camp tended to house those who were not accepted in the main registration centres. The ambition of many of the aid agencies was to extend a lighter touch than the official registration centre, with children’s entertainers, activities, warm tea and fruit.
LIGHTHOUSE
The Korakas peninsula forms the most northerly point of Lesvos island and marks one of the closest points to mainland Turkey. Its lighthouse signals dangerous rocks to passing ships. The light has however acted as a beacon for hundreds of nighttime voyages across the Aegean Sea, resulting in numerous tragedies as unseaworthy vessels try to land on perilous rocks. The Lighthouse Relief team, coastguards and rescue teams now try to guide arrivals away from the lighthouse and towards the safer landing beaches to the West.
VESTS
In the summer of 2015 the tourist beaches of Lesvos were strewn with discarded life vests and the remains of inflatable boats. In a partially ecologically, partially perceptually motivated move the local authorities began the process of systematically collecting and removing this material from the beaches. This municipal waste site on the edge of the town of Mithimna became an ever expanding landscape of life vests. The tens of thousands of vests gathered here each represents a life that has attempted to cross the ocean. The fate of their wearers is unknown, many will have been safely landed on the beaches of Scala but other vests will have washed up alone on the shores.
