Alice Schivardi's Floating Insect Cemetery on the Tiber

In May 2018, the Transponder event took place in Rome, conceived by Carlo Caloro and produced by the non-profit association artQ13. Set on the Lungotevere Castello dock and a moored boat, the exhibition project drew on the symbolic values of the river to address contemporary issues of political identity, cultural divide, and environmental (im)balance. Transponder articulated the collective imaginary of the river as a natural phenomenon, political border, economic and socio-cultural channel, transport route, and metaphor for flows of data, images, language, time, and life. Among the works presented was Alice Schivardi's (b. 1976) video documenting "Cimitero galleggiante per insetti" (Floating Cemetery for Insects), a surreal inflatable boat containing a miniature cemetery landscape with tiny coffins on a patch of grass, illuminated by four spotlights resembling antennas.