In 2022, the writer Borja Bagunyà and the photographer Aleix Plademunt decided to repeat the journey of Odysseus in an attempt to take a new look at the journey Homer described 2,700 years ago. Their route reveals the changes the Mediterranean has undergone, for example with a proliferation of national and cultural frontiers, the omnipresence of ruins and cemeteries, the metamorphosis of heroes and heroism, the change in the very idea of monstrosity in the context of the climate emergency, and the most devastating manifestations of globalisation. The present makes a new reading of the classics, but the classics make a new reading of the present.
One of the most recent episodes of this journey has been the discovery by the two artists of the project “Sirens and Robots” designed by Joan Llort, an oceanographer of artistic sensibility, and Tarta Relena, a duo of singers of ancient and electronic music. Presently adrift, the group is on a quest to find the siren song, using oceanographic data collected by undersea robots that work along the same coasts that Odysseus sailed past.
In this surprising conversation, five fans of the Mediterranean present unfinished projects, all of which are related with Homer’s stories, and the search for their traces in the Mediterranean of today.
