AGONIE- Shipwreck of values by ANNAMALT
Title: AGONIE- Shipwreck of values
By: ANNAMALT
Description to the work: Something has happened on the high seas: Zeus, in the form of a white bull, who just carried Europa on his back through the sea, is sinking. There is no trace of Europa. A misfortune? For years, European values of humanity have suffered shipwreck in the Mediterranean. In 2014, divers examined a wreck of one of the countless sunk refugee ships off the island of Lampedusa. Not far from the rescuing European mainland, they found a shipwreck with nearly 400 dead, unnamed people. Among them was a couple still holding each other months after their deaths, a pregnant woman who had given birth to a baby in her death throes. The gruesome images of this never made it to the public. For quite a few people fleeing from the greatest need, the sea proves to be a trap that swallows them, a nothingness that destroys them without help from those who could provide it. Often the causes of flight are direct or delayed consequences of the behavior of European countries that have ensured intolerable conditions in their homeland. With the refugees, Europe is drowning, drowning its values, its humanity, its ideals. As colonial powers, crossing the sea was the least of the problems for the states of today's Europe; on the contrary, they once used ships to transport people from their homelands to foreign countries against their will, in order to cause their certain, nameless death by exploiting their labor. Development in their home countries was thus no longer possible. Today these people are looking for work, security, a halfway free existence, a future for themselves and their families, but are left alone to die at sea. The images of this lonely death above and under water have long been withheld from us, so that we may weigh ourselves in safety and our conscience - as in the times of colonial exploitation and slave trade - remains soothed.