Category: Archive

Research

The ‘research’ section is dedicated to research and critical literature addressing the work and activities of AMM and its development over time. It includes documents, research projects, and papers, but is also open to interpretations and debates regarding migrant testimony, memory, and self-representation in Italy, as well as to the results of research and critical investigations into migratory processes and their representation in contemporary society.

Cartographic Storytelling, Migration, and Reception Environments
Hanna Musiol
in Environment, Space, Place, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2020, pp. 1-30.

Les mots pour le dire : un cercle narratif avec des arrivants somaliens à Rome
Alessandro Triulzi
in Violence et récit: Dire, traduire, transmettre le génocide et l’exil, sous la direction de Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Paris: Hermann, 2020, pp. 257-268.

Archiviare il presente. L’autonarrazione dei migranti come fonte
Alessandro Triulzi
in Stranieri nel ricordo. Verso una memoria pubblica delle migrazioni, a cura di Daniele Salerno e Patrizia Violi, Bologna: il Mulino, 2020, pp. 41-62.
Previously published in German in Luisa Regazzoni, ed., Schriftlose Vergangenheiten, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 307-326.

Landscape is a space of action and thought
Costanza Meli
in PAD Pages on Arts & Design #17, December 2019.

Temporality in cosmopolitan solidarity: Archival activism and participatory documentary film as mediated witnessing of suffering at Europe’s borders
Karina Horsti
in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2019, pp. 231-244.

Ten Years of Participatory Cinema as a Form of Political Solidarity with Refugees in Italy. From ZaLab and Archivio Memorie Migranti to 4CaniperStrada
Annalisa Frisina and Stefania Muresu
in Arts, 7(4), 2018.

Working with migrants’ memories in Italy: The Lampedusa dump
Alessandro Triulzi
in Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1 October 2016, pp. 149-163.

Stranded traces: Migrants’ objects, self-narration and ideology in a failed museum project
Gianluca Gatta
in Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1 October 2016, pp. 181-191.

Futura memoria
Susanna Guerini
in AM – Antropologia Museale, n. 37/39, 2015-2016.

Voci, racconti e testimonianze dall’Italia delle migrazioni. L’Archivio delle memorie migranti
Alessandro Triulzi
in Storia e futuro on line, n. 35, June 2014.

A Gaze from Lampedusa. Dagmawi Yimer’s Journey to the Outpost of Europe
Simona Wright (Director of the Italian Studies Program, The College of  New Jersey, USA).
in Italica, Vol. 91, No. 4, 2014, pp. 775-802

From Long Journeys. African Migrants on the Road
edited by Alessandro Triulzi and Robert Lawrence McKenzie, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.

Listening to Migrants’ Narratives: An Introduction
Alessandro Triulzi and Robert Lawrence McKenzie

‘Like a plate of spaghetti’. Migrant Narratives from the Libya-Lampedusa Route
Alessandro Triulzi

Our Journey
Dagmawi Yimer

Corpi di frontiera. Etnografia del trattamento dei migranti al loro arrivo a Lampedusa
Gianluca Gatta
in AM – Rivista della società italiana di antropologia medica, n. 33-34, October 2012.

Middle passages, musealizzazione e soggettività a Bristol e Lampedusa
Gianluca Gatta and Giusy Muzzopappa
in Estetica. studi e ricerche, No. 1, 2012.
Based on in-depth ethnographic research, this essay compares two rather different museum experiences: the heritagization of transatlantic slave trade in Bristol (UK) and the birth of a museum of migration in Lampedusa (Sicily). The question, open to debate, is whether the museum can contain simultaneously the hegemonic tale and its possible counter-narratives.

Per un archivio delle memorie migranti
Alessandro Triulzi
in Zapruder. Storie in movimento, n. 28, May-August 2012 (Photo by Desislava Valentinova Stoichkova).

From Colonia e postcolonia come spazi diasporici. Attraversamenti di memorie, identità e confini nel Corno d’Africa
edited by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar, Silvana Palma, Alessandro Triulzi, Alessandro Volterra, Roma: Carocci, 2011.

Memorie e voci erranti tra colonia e postcolonia
Alessandro Triulzi

Come in uno specchio. Il gioco delle identità a Lampedusa
Gianluca Gatta

The Madonna of the Sea
Maaza Menghiste
in Granta, No. 118, 2012.

Una nuova voce nel cinema italiano? L’emergenza di forme di cinema migrante in Italia
Alessandro Jedlowski
in Camera Africa: Classici, noir, Nollywood e la nuova generazione del cinema delle Afriche, edited by Vanessa Lanari, Fabrizio Colombo e Stefano Gaiga, Verona: Cierre Edizioni, 2011, pp. 69-76.

Africani in Italia: la memoria e l’archivio
Alessandro Triulzi
in Meridione, n. 2, April-June 2010, p. 30-50.

Interviews

The “interviews” section documents meetings, conversations, interviews, story circles or discussions held, developed or organized by AMM’s volunteers, researchers and members. It includes brief extracts and an index with basic information on the meetings or conversations.

 

Dialoghi di backstage Come un uomo sulla terra (2008)

The interviews reproduced below are Italian translations of the backstage dialogues in Amharic presented in “Come un uomo sulla terra” (2008), filmed by Andrea Segre, Dagmawi Yimer and Riccardo Biadene together with a group of young men and women from Ethiopia, all of whom (including Dagmawi) were attending the Italian language school Asinitas in Via Ostiense. Their stories make up the earliest audiovisual first-hand account of the journey along the deadly L-L (Libya-Lampedusa) route passing through the oasis of Kufra in southern Libya. Famed in the past as the site of Sanusi resistance to Italian occupation, crushed by General Graziani in 1931, Kufra is sadly notorious in the stories of migrants from the Horn of Africa as the site, today, of detention, brutal violence and the trafficking of migrants by smugglers and police forces colluding with the Libyan regime.
Below are brief extracts from their accounts of how they crossed the Libyan inferno.

The full text of the Italian translation is deposited with the Archivio delle Memorie Migranti.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 1 (Young Ethiopians: n. 1)

DS is a young refugee from Ethiopia. In September 2007 he arrived in Rome after leaving the district of Kirkos, Addis Ababa, aged 26. He studied for a period in India and after a brief stay in Ethiopia decided to leave his country.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 2 (Young Ethiopians: n. 2)
TN is a young man from Ethiopia, born in the district of Kirkos, Addis Ababa. After leaving his country at the age of 20 he now lives in Rome.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 3 (Young Ethiopians: n. 3)
ND is a young refugee from the district of Kirkos, Addis Ababa. He left Ethiopia at the age of 19, shortly after finishing high school.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 4 ((Young Ethiopians: n. 4)
DA was born at Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, in 1974. As a child he was sent to live with an aunt who was living in Addis Ababa. He decided to leave his country after getting involved in clashes during the 2005 elections. He now lives in Rome, where he works as a barber.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 5 (Young Ethiopians: n. 5)
AW is a young Ethiopian born in the district of Kirkos, Addis Ababa, in 1989. He left his country at the age of 17 to join his brother in England. After a journey across the desert he landed in Lampedusa, but his attempt to leave Italy failed. He now lives in Rome.

AMM Giovani Etiopia n. 6 (Young Ethiopians: n. 6)
DB is a 26 year old refugee from the district of Kirkos, Addis Ababa. In Ethiopia he was a policeman. He lives with his family in the north of Italy.

AMM Migranti e spazi pubblici n. 1 (Migrants and public spaces: n. 1)
HD is a young Moroccan. He lives in Rome and works in a shop.

AMM Migranti e spazi pubblici n. 2 (Migrants and public spaces: n. 2)
ZM is a young Somali refugee. He is a journalist and has been living in Italy since 2008. He works at present as a social worker and collaborates with the Archivio delle memorie migranti.

AMM GT n. 3
Gabriel Tzeggai, aged 58, is an Eritrean who held administrative positions in independent Eritrea after 17 years fighting with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front during the war of liberation that ended in 1991. In 2007 he left Eritrea and took refuge first in England and then in Italy.

Self-representations

This section includes stories, self-narratives and diaries produced by migrants wishing to reflect on the nature and legacy of migration as an individual and collective experience. Self-representations, mostly in writing but with words that are often supplemented with images, signs and audiovisual material, their aim is to rearticulate the turning points and crossings of the authors’ lives and journeys and to share their experience with others.

DiMMi diaries to listen in audio version. Thanks to the contribution of Neuradio from Bologna and the voice of Donatella Allegro, it is possible to listen to some of the finalist autobiographical tales of the 2017 edition of the Dimmi – Multimedia Diaries Migrants competition and collected in the volume Parole Oltre le frontiere, edited by Alessandro Triulzi, Patrizia Di Luca, Natalia Cangi, Middle Lands, 2018. The first episode of the cycle is dedicated to Africa: four stories of struggles and hopes, of migration and integration, selected, dramatically reduced and directed on stage by Andrea Biagiotti for the Pieve 2018 Prize.
 
 
The second episode is dedicated to migrant memories comes from Pakistan. Ghayas’ story explores the different nuances of the word “love”, from marriage to the desire for conquest, from love for the mountains in search of freedom, up to the crossing that brought him to Italy.
 
 
The third episode is dedicated to Elona Aliko, who embarked from Albania to Italy in 2000. The detachment from one’s land is painful, but equally difficult is to take root in the country of arrival. Elona recounts her progress in a new land and a new life in images, discovering a double identity that from a limit becomes wealth, for herself and for others.
 
 
Somali refugee narrative circle (January-June 2008)

Originating in the Asinitas school in via Ostiense, Rome, the circle was the first self-narrative group to be set up with Somali refugees. It involved a group of Somali asylum seekers who had arrived in Italy shortly before and were housed in the Castelnuovo di Porto reception centre, together with cultural mediator Zahra Omar, Asinitas and AMM coordinators Marco Carsetti, Chiara Mammarella, SandroTriulzi, Dagmawi Yimer and Sintayeh Eshete and two writers of Somali origin, Igiaba Scego and Cristina Ali Farah.

Parole per il cerchio (Words for the circle) by Cristina Ali Farah (2008)

A reflection on some of the key words used in the story circle, from a broadcast by the Rai3 radio programme “Fahrenheit”.

Backstage dialogues from the film “C.A.R.A. Italia”

The stories presented below are taken from the backstage dialogues collected by Dagmawi Yimer while working on C.A.R.A. Italia (40’, Asinitas-AMM, 2010), filmed in 2009 in collaboration with a group of young Somali asylum seekers at the Castelnuovo di Porto reception centre. Translated from Somali by Cristina Ali Farah. Story editing by Alessandro Triulzi and Abubakar Muktar Jokof. The age of the interviewees refers to the year the interview took place. The original dialogues are deposited in the AMM.

Da Addis Abeba a Lampedusa. Cronaca di un viaggio (From Addis Ababa to Lampedusa. Story of a journey) by Dagmawi Yimer

Dagmawi’s account of his journey from Ethiopia to Italy in spring-summer 2006. The Italian text is published in Colonia e postcolonia come spazi diasporici, AA.VV., Carocci 2011, pp. 335-352. The English version (“Our Journey”) is in A. Triulzi, R. L. McKenzie (eds), Long Journeys. African Migrants on the Road (pp. 233-253).

Nomi e corpi. Racconti d’oltremare (Names and bodies. Tales from the other side of the sea) by Dagmawi Yimer

The Italian translation of the James K. Binder Lecture given by Dagmawi Yimer on May 6, 2015, at the University of California San Diego. The original text in English is also included.

Il sapore della libertà (The taste of freedom) by Gabriel Tseggai

The story of the struggle for the independence of Eritrea in the experience of a former fighter: the sixties, the growth of awareness among young Eritreans, the war of liberation, the choices he made and the dramas he experienced. The Italian text is published in Colonia e postcolonia come spazi diasporici, AA.VV., Carocci 2011, pp. 273-297.

Lettera di Adal al fratello Abraham (Adal’s letter to his brother Abraham)

A letter from the brother of one of the victims of the tragedy of October 3, 2013, off Lampedusa.

Storia di Hawani (Hawani’s story)

The story of Hawani Debella, an Oromo woman who escaped from Ethiopia after the Derg seized power in 1974, told in an interview with the Kenyan historian Aneesa Kassam in 1994. See Hawani Debella and Aneesa Kassam, “Hawani’s Story”, Being and Becoming Oromo, ed. Paul Baxter, Ian Hultin and Alessandro Triulzi (NAI, Uppsala 1996, pp. 26-36).

Ritorno a Mogadiscio by Hassan Ahmed

Ritorno a Mogadiscio (Return to Mogadishu) is a diary kept by Hassan Ahmed during a visit to his home country in January 2017, after 27 years of absence.

Selected by AMM to participate in the DiMMi-Diari Multimediali Migranti competition, it was awarded the prize in Pieve S. Stefano in summer 2017. Together with the author’s previous diary, Morire a Mogadiscio (Dying in Mogadishu), it is now forthcoming with Efesto.

Tre storie nomadi

Three stories extracted from the backstage dialogues collected by Dagmawi Yimer while filming C.A.R.A. Italia (Asinitas-AMM 2010). The Italian text is to be found in lo straniero, n. 164, 2014: 1-11.