Leonardo Caffo™

Rethink the Rescue Boat

Promoted by: MADE Program / Rethinking Lampedusa Research Group, Accademia di Belle Arti “Rosario Gagliardi” (Siracusa), IUVENTA Crew, and Lazy Studio.

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The Story of IUVENTA

Between 2016 and 2017, the IUVENTA, a former fishing trawler operated by the German NGO Jugend Rettet, navigated the central Mediterranean, assisting over 23,000 people fleeing war, violence, persecution, and poverty. The ship became an international symbol of civilian solidarity at sea and of civil resistance against the progressive closure of European borders and the criminalization of search and rescue.

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In August 2017, Italian authorities seized the vessel in the port of Trapani, Sicily, accusing members of the crew of facilitating unauthorized immigration. The IUVENTA case became the first and longest criminal proceeding ever brought against a civil search-and-rescue NGO in the central Mediterranean. For seven years, the ship and its crew were placed at the center of a wider political, judicial, and media campaign that transformed the act of saving lives into a criminal act.

In April 2024, after seven years of proceedings, the Trapani court acquitted all defendants, dropping every charge. Yet the ship itself, abandoned, plundered, and left to decay under state custody, still sits precariously in Trapani’s harbour: a silent witness, a floating archive of memory, loss, violence, and state repression.

The IUVENTA thus became not only a rescue vessel, but also a political artefact, a legal archive, and a material witness to the struggle over visibility, responsibility, and truth in the Mediterranean.

Note on Counter-Evidence: In the context of criminalization, the work of Forensic Oceanography and of the legal team assisting the IUVENTA played a crucial role. Through counter-mapping, visual analysis, reconstruction of events, satellite data, AIS tracks, weather conditions, and testimonies, Forensic Oceanography contributed to exposing the fragility of the accusations and producing counter-evidence within the broader public and legal field.

About the Promoters

• MADE Program: The creative research hub of Accademia di Belle Arti “Rosario Gagliardi” in Siracusa (Sicily) operates at the crossroads of contemporary art, design, pedagogy, traditional craftsmanship, and critical research on the political and cultural urgencies of the Mediterranean. One of its core initiatives is Rethinking Lampedusa, a multi-year research and educational program initiated with Northeastern University (Boston) that approaches Lampedusa as a living laboratory for radical hospitality and mutual coexistence.PDF+ 1
• IUVENTA Crew: Brings a direct history of civil rescue, legal struggle, and resistance to the criminalization of solidarity.PDF
• Lazy Studio: A creative and spatial practice focused on how material, visual, and collective processes can reactivate places, objects, and narratives (co-producers of the IUVENTA documentary and the Netflix feature film 23.000 lives).PDF+ 1

Core Vision

This call is part of a broader process addressing the possible dismantling of the IUVENTA, a consequence of its seizure, abandonment, and years of neglect. Rather than accepting this disappearance as a final act, the project asks how the ship might be temporarily or permanently reactivated as an artistic, civic, and symbolic infrastructure.

We invite designers, visual artists, architects, performers, musicians, sound artists, filmmakers, writers, artisans, hackers, collectives, and creative thinkers from any background to collectively imagine the ship’s next chapter.

The project should not monumentalize trauma or reproduce the spectacle of suffering. Instead, it should open space for critical imagination, shared responsibility, and new forms of civic relation. We invite participants to think of the ship as a wounded civic body.

We especially encourage proposals that explore:

• Histories on the Move: The histories of people rescued along the central Mediterranean route, or other vessels marked by similar destinies (such as the migrant boat from the shipwreck of 18 April 2015, exhibited at the Venice Biennale as Barca Nostra and then abandoned).PDF
• Material Interventions: Site-specific projects that dialogue with the ship’s scarred materiality: rust, faded rescue-orange paint, and traces of former life-saving equipment.PDF
• The Ship as Evidence: Projects (artistic, visual, sonic, performative, digital) engaging with archives, testimonies, maps, legal documents, and maritime data.PDF
• The Ship as School: Proposals transforming the vessel into a space of public learning around search and rescue, maritime law, migration, and counter-mapping.PDF
• The Ship as Archive: Projects activating memory without turning suffering into spectacle, giving space to the voices of survivors, crews, lawyers, and activists.PDF
• Spatial Activation: Imaginative activations of the deck, hold, bridge, and engine room into poetic, pedagogical, or political spaces.PDF
• Hybrid Formats: Blending visual art, soundscapes, live performance, participatory design, digital storytelling, or speculative cartography.PDF
• Cross-Cultural Dialogues: Involving Trapani’s local residents, migrant communities in Sicily, artists with lived experience of crossing, and international networks.PDF
• Sustainability & Circularity: Reuse of salvaged ship parts, low-budget materials, renewable energy hacks, and upcycled scenography.PDF
• Temporal Experimentations: Short intense activations (3 to 5 days), longer residencies, seasonal returns, or phased evolutions.PDF

Eligibility & Ethical Framework

• Eligibility: Open to individuals, duos, collectives, and studios with no age, nationality, or disciplinary limits. Visionary yet realistically implementable proposals are highly welcome.PDF+ 1
• Ethical Framework: All proposals must engage critically and honestly with the political and historical context of the IUVENTA. Projects must resist aestheticizing suffering or reproducing voyeuristic, spectacular, or humanitarian visual regimes. Funding from institutions complicit in border violence, militarization, or the criminalization of migration will not be accepted.PDF+ 2

The Symposium

The authors of the 5 selected projects will be invited to develop full concepts and present their proposals publicly in Siracusa on 3 and 4 October 2026, in connection with the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Migration.

What is required from the selected participants:

• Attend the Symposium in Siracusa.PDF
• Present the project (10-15 minutes).PDF
• Deliver a short participatory lab or talk (approx. 1-2 hours).PDF
• Collaborate with MADE and IUVENTA Crew on a shared vision document.

Expenses: For collective submissions, the organization will cover travel and accommodation costs, plus a maximum of €300 for presentation materials, for one member of the working group. A jury of artists, curators, activists, and stakeholders will help shape the future development and funding plan.

How to Apply

Please submit your materials to r.esposito@madeprogram.it by 30 June 2026 (midnight CET).

Required Documents:

• Project description (max 2 MB PDF): including concept, preliminary budget, renders, and sustainability considerations.
• Short CV (max 1 page).
• Portfolio (max 2 MB PDF).

Selected applicants will be notified by 31 July 2026.

Intellectual Property

Candidates retain full ownership of the intellectual property rights relating to their submitted project concepts. Applicants declare that their submissions are original and do not infringe on third-party rights, holding the organizers harmless from any liability.

“Solidarity is not a crime. Creativity can be its most powerful continuation. We rethink the IUVENTA – together.”