In his video, Centro di Permanenza Temporanea, the central setting is an airport in San Jose, CA. A crowd of people moves toward an aircraft boarding staircase, in a silent, stoic manner. They form a queue while we can observe planes taking off and landing in the background. Slowly, the stairs fill up with migrant men and women. The people’s faces mirror their yearning for the fulfilment of a humane life without discrimination and cultural uprooting. The camera slowly circles around the free-standing staircase and, in doing so, elicits a subsequent perplexity: To where is this plane headed?
In its title the video Centro di Permanenza Temporanea refers to the Italian name for the temporary camps for immigrants arriving on the Italian coasts illegally and on a weekly basis. Linguistically, it offers a paradox of meaning, a tension between a temporary and permanent existence, a tension that Paci maintains in this film, where men and women wait for a plane travelling no where. They remain trapped between the transitory and the fixed, a state that speaks to the dislocation of people migranting across the globe.
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