Centro di Permanenza Temporanea (2007)
Filmmaker and artist Adrian Paci fled his native Albania in the 1990s. The memory of fleeing and sense of displacement is a burden he carries and shares with others. The video begins with people patiently walking up a flight of stairs. The camera slowly circles the freestanding staircase as it zooms in and out on the passive faces and the departing planes. However, it soon emerges that there is no plane.
It is evident that these (labour) migrants from South and Central America are queuing in vain. This work’s title, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea (Centre of Permanent Temporariness), is also the Italian name for holding and detention centres. Many refugees and migrants, both legal and illegal, find themselves in this contradictory place of ‘permanent temporariness’.