Chronicles of that time

2005-2020
2021

Film
Credits

Installation version – Exhibition views
Reader Palermo

The film is visible on the following platforms:
DaFilms
True Story

Interview with Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo
by Marco Cipollini, FID Marseille 2021

“Reconstruct the melody to reconstruct a chronicle of that time”
The film is in search of the melody a friend shared with the filmmakers 15 years ago when they were travelling together between North Africa and Sicily. As a seasonal worker from Tunisia, who lived on the island of Lampedusa, Abdelhamid had become the witness to the shift from the past border regime to a new one, to the borderisation process taking place in southern Europe. What has happened between the moment when this melody was recorded on now obsolete videotape and the moment when it is taken up again today, continued in the form of new musical performances? Drawing on new and unedited material from previous projects, the film recomposes a chronicle made out of fragments, of lacunae and hauntings. It explores the transformations in the Mediterranean region over the past decades and highlights the necropolitical drift of European migration policies when immemorial forms of solidarity and rescue at sea are criminalised, when the deportation or pushback of people have become widespread and camps proliferate on the other shore, when people are left to die at sea.

While migration and borders are generally perceived as spatial processes, Chronicles of that time focuses instead on the temporal dimension of these phenomena. A series of subjective and historical perspectives emerges to contradict the common notion of a “migration emergency” always linked to the present moment. These alternative temporalities invite us to envisage a chronicle that is singular in its refusal to coincide with the official version of history arranged by treaty dates and political decisions that have made migration illegal. The film reflects on how the current border regime in southern Europe has significantly reconfigured the partition of the sensible by establishing new terms for naming the reality it produced and by creating new distributions between the visible and the invisible. Emphasising some recent developments in European migration policies, which contribute to keeping border violence out of sight, the film shifts attention from the “border spectacle” invariably exposed in mainstream media to unheard or neglected voices and histories — to the aesthetic and political dimensions of listening.

Chronicles of that time

a film by
Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo

voice performance
Alessandra Eramo

oud
Mohannad Nasser

the soundtrack of the film includes elements of the sound piece
A space of attunement (2016)
by Gilles Aubry

script and editing
Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo

production
le réel et le possible

camera
Raphaël Cuomo

sound
Gilles Aubry

additional sound
Maria Iorio

voice performance recorded at
Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm

colourist
Cuttlefish

translation
Simon Chapman
Denise Contini
Maria Iorio
Adnen Jdey

with the support of
Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm
Erna and Curt Burgauer Stiftung
Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung
Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
IASPIS
Istituto Svizzero, Roma | Milano | Palermo
Le souvenir du présent
République et canton de Genève, Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain
Pro Helvetia

thanks to
Archive, Chiara Figone, Paolo Caffoni
Soukaina Aboulaoula & Yvon Langué (Untitled duo)
Mona Kuschel, Couturereal
in Palermo: Pier Domino, Letizia Gullo, Istituto svizzero, Giorgio Mega, Cristoforo Pezzino, Agata Polizzi, Livio Spallino, Saro Tiné
Medialab HKB, Nina Kurth, Hugo Ryser, Manuel Schüpfer
Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin
Johannes Bock, Alexander Boldt, Markus Ruff
ARGOS Brussels, Muhammad Al-Kashef, Emilie Bujès, Victoria A. Castrillejo, Andrea Cinel, Joëlle Comé, Paolo Cuttitta, Binta Diaw, Alessandra Eramo, Simone Frangi, Moaz Haouari, Charles Heller, Adnen Jdey, Kha, Christine Lemke, Lou, Makrem Mandhouj, famille Mandhouj, Mohannad Nasser, Ahmed Refaat, Jawer Salki, Andrea Thal, Alessandro Triulzi, Dagmawi Yimer

for their invaluable feedback
Gilles Aubry, Tobias Hering, Gioia Dal Molin, Annamaria Licciardello, Federica Martini, Angela Melitopoulos, Laura Romano, Kerstin Schroedinger, Claudine Vert-Pré

special thanks to
Naycene Boussoffara
Nayrouz Boussoffara
Zohra Gaiech


Chronicles of that time includes original footage and previously unedited material from the films Sudeuropa (2005-2007) and The Interpreter (2009) by Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo as well as a photograph taken by geographer Makrem Mandhouj selected from his research material. Additional sequences were filmed on location in Porto Empedocle and Lampedusa in October 2017 and September 2018, as well as in Berlin in 2020.

The film is a reworked and expanded version of the installation presented on the occasion of the exhibition Cronache di quel tempo curated by Gioia Dal Molin, Istituto Svizzero, Archivio Storico Communale di Palermo, October 2020.

The project was initiated in close collaboration with Archive, Berlin.
It also resulted in the screening programme That relation between us, or among us, curated by Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo, which accompanied the development of the film.