Gian Maria Tosatti and Alessandro Bulgini on Calais as Europe's Future City

In a 2016 essay on Artribune, Christian Caliandro reflects on the work of Gian Maria Tosatti and Alessandro Bulgini in Calais, France. Tosatti's central idea frames Calais as the 21st-century European capital, a city of the future built by migrants in the Jungle, located in the triangle between London, Paris, and Brussels—former colonial capitals. He describes the Jungle as a paradoxical capital of a free world, a constant challenge to Europe's betrayed ideals. On the beach where Europe continues to shipwreck, Tosatti's installation features a ruined star from the European flag washed ashore. Bulgini's "Opera Viva" (2016) involves Luci d'artista in Calais. The text juxtaposes this northern finisterre with Lampedusa, another terminal beach and nodal point of the 21st century, referencing Pietro Bartolo's memoir "Lacrime di sale." Caliandro describes walking with the artists on the vast beach scattered with relics of contemporary history—World War II, surveillance, borders, resistance—and the New Kabul restaurant, where migrants wait to jump on trucks. The essay emphasizes the precarious, unstable condition as the home of this century.