Rotta
ROTTA
Site-specific audio video installation by Giuseppe Lo Schiavo
curated by serena Tabacchi
Palazzo Vecchio – Sala d’Arme, Florence, Italy
Rotta is a multimedia installation that reflects on orientation, loss, and responsibility in a time marked by uncertainty and global crises. Today, traditional ideas of progress and stability appear fragile, and navigating the present often means moving without shared maps or clear coordinates.
The project is inspired by one of the Mediterranean’s most silent tragedies: migrant boats bound for Italy that disappear at sea, sometimes later found drifting with the autopilot still engaged—empty. The work draws on testimonies from families searching for missing relatives and on accounts gathered through the artist’s brother, a motorboat operator in the Italian Coast Guard involved in search-and-rescue missions.
At the center of the installation is a 19-minute film recorded live at sea with seven cameras and thirty-two microphones. A marching band performs aboard small boats as they travel eight nautical miles from the coast, a symbolic distance where the central action unfolds.
Rather than offering reconciliation, Rotta opens a space for reflection, inviting viewers to consider how to navigate the present without losing a sense of humanity.
Rotta transforms the exhibition space into an immersive device. Image, sound, and sculpture interact to construct a total environment in which the viewer moves through layers of listening, presence, and reflection. The installation invites the public not only to observe, but to take a position.
The musical performance at sea unfolds as a secular ceremony suspended between commemoration and tension. Requiems traditionally associated with mourning are performed in open water, transforming the journey into a ritual that acknowledges absence while confronting the viewer with the unresolved realities of the present.
The final track of the installation is composed by RAKANS, a music producer currently based in Germany, drawing from his personal experience of crossing the Mediterranean by boat toward Europe.
At the climax of the journey, the artist performs the work’s most radical gesture: an ancient sculpture is entrusted to the sea. Deliberately released into the water, the object is exposed to the public gaze at the very moment it is removed from preservation and permanence. The act takes the form of a sacrifice, opening an ethical fracture within the work: why does the loss of an artwork scandalize us, while the loss of human lives at sea so often fades into silence? In this gesture, Rotta transforms art into a question—one that confronts the viewer with responsibility, memory, and the value we assign to human life.
Palazzo Vecchio – Sala d’Arme
Florence, Italy
From left: Carlo Francini, (Head of the Municipal Museums of Florence); Serena Tabacchi, (Curator); Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, (Artist).
CREDITS
Artist
Giuseppe Lo Schiavo
Curator
Serena Tabacchi
Music
Marco Guazzone — contemporary piece co-written with the artist
Performed by
Banda di Pizzo Calabro
Conductor: Alessandro Maglia
Soprano: Maria Antonietta Pisano
Music
Pianto Eterno — P. Quatrano
Cristus — Pietro Marincola
Rotta — Marco Guazzone & Giuseppe Lo Schiavo
Se Perdo Te — Patty Pravo
L’arte non serve a niente — Giuliano Vozella, Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, Marco Guazzone
Forget to Remember — RAKANS
Mixing & Sound Design
Giuliano Vozella
Cinematography
Living Camera
Location Producer
Marco Farina
Field Research
Carmelo Lo Schiavo
Costumes
Concetta De Pascale
Graphic Design
Karolina Nowak
With the support of
Fondazione MUS.E, in collaboration with Musei Civici Fiorentini
Under the patronage of the Municipality of Florence
Patrons
Milena Pappas
Khansa Ghandi
Supported by Galleria Spazio Nuovo