Vital Elements and Postcolonial Moves: Forensics as the Art of Paying Attention in a Mediterranean Harbour Town

Introduction

For more than a decade, the dead bodies of people who had hoped to cross the Mediterranean have been washing ashore on the beaches of Zarzis, a coastal town in southern Tunisia. This research program starts out from the question: How did these bodies end up here?

Context

While in Europe people who are adrift may be seen as evidence of a “migration crisis,” from the African side of the Mediterranean they point to the chronic, (neo-)colonial depletion of livelihoods. To map how life is enduringly made unliveable, this program develops the method of forensics as the art of paying attention.

Methodology

This method will allow us to trail exemplary vital elements—resources crucial for fostering life and livelihood—and the relations between them. Our cases include:

• The extraction of phosphate
• The fishing of sea sponges
• The cultivation of tomatoes
• The extraction of water
• The leaving behind of industrial waste

Focus Area

To better understand the complexity of, and material semiotic relations between, vital elements, we focus on Zarzis as a nodal point. This will make it possible for team members to visit each other’s sites and to work together in a Method Lab, as well as to collaborate with local artists who will help to sensitize us to local concerns in a Vital Elements Atelier.

Innovation

The research program is innovative in three ways:

1. It contributes to a decolonial shift of attention from the “migration crisis” befalling Europe to the “chronic depletion of life” afflicting Africa.
2. It develops the method of forensics as an art of paying attention to ethnographically study the complexity of, and the relations between, vital elements and the ways they impact living and dying.
3. It advances the concept of vital elements for materialities that are active, make connections, and foster life, or spur on death.