Dr. Karina Horsti: Government of Finland/David and Nancy Speer Visiting Professor, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Introduced by Dr. Emily Winderman: Department of Communication Studies & IAS Media Archives for the Future Research and Creative Collaborative

This event addresses cultural memory of present-day violent bordering of Europe. It proposes that focus on survival adds an important temporal aspect to the issue of migrant deaths at borders. This awareness of temporality—that the present will one day be past—allows us to imagine possible futures, potentially prompting a vision of a convivial future society: a society shared by both those whose governments created the border and those who managed to cross it. Further, we anticipate that in the future, others may examine and judge the present, just as we currently examine the violent events of the past. The specters haunting the present are not only from the past but also from the future.

This event will feature a talk drawing on the book Survival and Witness at Europe’s Border and is accompanied by a short documentary film based on a shipwreck survivor testimony filmed in Lampedusa (Italy) and Sweden.

Image courtesy Karina Horsti.