The day of the commemoration, met us with harsh weather conditions. Besides being bloody cold, a strong North wind not only made it difficult to attend the action, but also to present our material. Nevertheless about 80 people joined us and stayed with us for almost 2 hours. We had prepared 26 small posters in English and Greek, so 52 in total- one for every shipwreck in which people were killed in the Aegean Sea in 2024. These posters were hung around Sappho square on clotheslines, which gave an impressive and sad picture.
We also had spent hours to fold little paper-boats. We used small flyers with some sentences we took from the testimonies.
We set up a projector and a speaker. After reading out our text, we played some music and got ready to start with the first testimony by a person who had lost his mother at sea. The testimony was recorded in English and we projected Greek subtitles to a screen hanging from a wall. After this we listened to the recording of the poem „We were in distress“ by Parwana Amiri who came to Lesvos and lived in Moria some years ago. Parwana had kindly given us the permission to use her words that stand for collective experiences of people on the move.
We listened to the second testimony in Farsi, of a person who spoke about his sister and her husband who went missing when they tried to cross to Lesvos and remain missing till today and we projected Greek and English subtitles. This was followed by the second poem of Parwana: „I swear I will never stay silent“. We closed the action with the third and last testimony, this time in Arabic. The person describes how the people on board of the small boat they used to cross were brutally attacked, even shot by the Hellenic Coast Guard. Again we projected the Greek and English subtitles. At the end we distributed the small paper boats. We had planned to leave them in the square, but the strong wind made this impossible. With this action we managed to bring the topic once more to the public space and we found a way to express our mourning, our anger, our political analysis and the will to keep fighting together.
Feel free to use our material to have a similar action where ever you are!
Preparation:
-We discussed a lot as a group. About if and how we want to do this. It were interesting, honest and fruitful discussion that never felt like a waste of time and we suggest to read our small reflection on this.
Reflexion on the commemoraction (English)
Αναστοχασμός για τη συμμετοχή μας στη Μέρα Μνήμης.
– We wrote a statement as an assembly that we read in lowd at the beggining of the event. You can download it here:
Commemoraction statement (Greek and English)
-We designed, printed and laminated the posters, as we were expecting bad weather and to be able to use them for later actions again. This came very handy even without rain, as they were resisting the wind quite ok and we could hang them easily with the clothes pins.
You can download them here:
posters shipwrecks 2024 (1) English
posters shipwrecks 2024 (2) English
posters shipwrecks 2024 (1) Greek
posters shipwrecks 2024 (2) Greek
-We asked people to share their stories with us, record them and send the recordings to us.
We translated the testimonies to Greek and English (where needed).
We turned the audio recordings into short movies with just white subtitles on a black background and the audio of the recordings.
You can download them here:
-We approached Parwana, asking her if she would allow us to use her poems. We recorded them and put Greek subtitles.
You can download them here, or decide to read them in the action. We did not feel we can manage this, so we went with the recordings. We also read before Parwana’s description to her poetry in general and to the specific poems we choose.
-We took small quotes from the testimonies, translated them to Greek and English and printed them on A5 flyers. This flyers we folded into small paper boats.
You can download them here:
Equipment:
For the testimonies:
-Projector
-Speaker
-Microphone
-Screen
-Camera to document the action
For the posters:
-Posters (in A4)
-Laminating foil
-Clothes line
-Cloths pins
Content:
-Text
-Quotes on the little paper boats (on A5)
-Testimonies
-Poems
-Some music, if you feel like it
