Living Memory. A research about Italian Colonialism (and beyond), gathers videos that document, up until this point, interviews with some of the most prominent figures in my research for this project, Antar Mohamed Marincola and Igiaba Scego. They talk and elaborate on colonialism, in particular Italian colonialism in Somalia and its repercussion in contemporary racist Italy. The videos are divided into chapters according to the questions and arguments I introduced.
The video with ANTAR MOHAMED MARINCOLA was recorded on the 23rd of March 2013 in Bologna (1 channel video | 30 minutes).
Antar Mohamed Marincola is a writer, teacher, actor and intercultural mediator. He works and lives in Bologna. Antar M.M. was born in Mogadishu (Somalia) in 1963. He grew up during the Siad Barre regime and moved to Italy in 1983 because of an academic fellowship awarded to him by the Somali Ministry of Education and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His last publication is “Timira. Mestizo novel” written in collaboration with Wu Ming 2 and Timira Hassan Yere/Isabella Marincola, who is Antar’s mother. The book is an autobiography of Timira which has many historical references to the political context of her time. Italian colonialism, fascism and (post)- colonialism or better to say contemporary racist Italy. In the book it is mentioned also the figure of Giorgio Marincola, Timira’s brother, a Black Italian partisan, who was murdered by Nazi troops in May 1945, few days after the official date of “Italian Liberation Day” (25 April 1945).
The video with IGIABA SCEGO was recorded on the 29th June 2013 in Venezia (1 channel video | 27 minutes)
Igiaba Scego is an Italian writer and journalist of Somali origin. She works and lives in Rome. Her parents migrated to Italy in 1969, after Siad Barre golpe. After graduating in Foreign Literature at the La Sapienza University of Rome she obtained her doctorate in pedagogy.In her last book, La mia casa è dove sono, remembers the first twenty years of her life. The story of a black child who was born in a white dominating culture and country, of an italian treated as a stranger, about her being somalian and of her Somalian parents roots.