(Art)activists place the first rescue platform in the Med

The group of art activists Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty) placed this October 3 their first rescue platform, dubbed Aylan 1. This platform is moored in one of the escape routes used by refugees. Aylan 1 is equipped with position light, a solar panel, food, radio and moorings. As they explain on their website, the platform is installed under Austrian Republic’s flag, which legally means €uropean territory.  They are now making a crowdfunding campaign, which have already fulfilled their planned budget, to install more rescue platforms…  A utopia enters the orbit of reality.

The Centre for Political Beauty refers to itself as a group that merges art with political action,  for the purpose of encouraging people to adopt a more humanitarian outlook on the world. Much of what they do is done for the sake of “not rendering void the legacy of the Holocaust”. One of their members, Massimo Sestini, has consistently been providing photography of the migrants to various media outlets including the British Newspaper, the Guardian, since at least mid-2014.

Among their actions,they have removed a section of the Berlin Wall, to transfer it to the outer border fences of the €uropean Union, and affixed it there, to symbolize the idea that the wall between the West and East Germany was ontologically the same as the border between €urope and Africa. They also plan to actually cut holes into some segments of the EU border fences on 09 November 2015, during the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

The first paragraph of this post is translated from an article on the Spanish blog “Focaliza la Atención”, one of the very few media who reported this interesting news.