Adrian Paci, Albanian, born 1969
Centro De Permanenza Temporanea (Temporary Detention Center), 2007
This image is a still from Adrian Paci’s brief film, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea. The still provides a stunning and captivating visual commentary on the insecurity and precarity that accompanies unabating “climate-change induced” mobility (Demos, Decolonizing Nature, 85). The airstairs in this image become increasingly more crowded with people towards the top, all of whom are waiting for a method of a way out that never arrives. This is made even more pronounced by the plane in the background taking flight in the opposite direction. There’s an interesting tension/contrast evident in the title of the image and the conditions it portrays, demonstrating the very way in which these people are perpetually detained within the confines of their precarity. Moreover, this tension is further reflected by the fact that this moment is captured in a photograph—these people are therefore fixed within the confines of this static image, temporarily detained forever. Label by Jay Jolles
In “The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement,” there is a video clip taken by Adrian Paci called Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, or Temporary Detention Center. In the clip, a crowd of people are squeezed onto a freestanding staircase as they wait for a plane that is slowly driving up to them. In this visual, you see a group of migrants who are on the staircase despite not being able to board the plane due to their urgent desire to leave. In this video, you can feel the group’s anticipation and anxiety that causes them to behave illogically just so that they can feel like they are closer to leaving by completing all the available steps before boarding the plane, even if it does not actually make them any closer to leaving. Label by Jordan Stofko