For this second “Moment of reflection” of the project More Than This, initiated in Marseille as a discussion forum, the group of artists, curators and theoreticians associated with the project organises a public meeting around the following question: how can we address artistic practices based on the Mediterranean waters rather than based on the national territories surrounding them?

Thinking about the notions of complexity, hospitality and movement, More Than This wants to give fluidity back to artists and their practices, often confined in geographic or even national stereotypes. This conversation with multiple speakers, conceived as a collaboration with the audience, relies on the text The Mediterranean as a Stage: Borders, Memories, Bodies, in which Gaia Giuliani intends to interpret the Mediterranean as a “stage” where various proscenium are active; a performance and multiple-story space, coexisting or in conflict; a cultural object and a platform of borders, memories and bodies, constantly filled and emptied of geopolitical meaning.

De-naturalising the Mediterranean then means to devise within and from its history, without overlooking the power networks, the movements of violence, resistance and harmonisation that disturb it, as well as the complex colonial archive basis that is constitutive thereof.

According to Giuliani, in this “middle sea”, the borders do not only exist as the limits of a tangible territory, they have been moved within the aquatic space, making it a highly political place.

The Mediterranean then emerges as a place of complexity and identity fluidity, and becomes a challenge for the hospitality potential of stage practices and their ability to resist definition simplifications.