Syncope

"On the morning of March 27th, 2011, 72 people fled Tripoli on an inflatable boat, expecting to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa. Instead, though, their boat ran out of fuel and rather than being rescued by one of the many vessels in these highly surveilled waters, the boat drifted for 14 days until all but 11 of the passengers perished. Survivors recount various points of contact with the external world during their ordeal, such as a military helicopter lowering a few packets of biscuits and bottles of water. No vessel chose to provide any assistance whatsoever to the passengers. The events, as recounted by those aboard the Left-to-Die Boat, appeared to constitute a severe violation of the legal obligation to provide assistance to any person in distress at sea." (Forensic Architecture) “An act of recovery, of countermemory, of memorial, of resistance, Syncope represents one of poetry’s powers: to write the unwriteable, to bring voices, history, and lives forth from the depths.” — John Keene