Lost at Sea : Caroline Bergvall's Mapping of Early Medieval and Contemporary Maritime Migration

Abstract

Caroline Bergvall’s multimedia project Drift (2013–16) is a spoken-word and dance performance of adapted texts and motives from the anonymous tenth century “The Seafarer” and other Old English and Scandinavian seafaring poems. These texts are interwoven with parts of a report about the so-called “Left-to-Die Boat,” an incident that occurred in March 2011, when the international community abandoned a refugee boat in the Mediterranean Sea. The performance piece and corresponding text publication (2014) work across different media and incorporate experimental poetry, animated text projections, forensic reports, soundscapes, maps, and line drawings. Drift is a harrowing account of the history of global cross-water migration, exiles, and perilous sea journeys, tracing the past’s linguistic and motivic presence in the present. This chapter focuses on how Bergvall’s adaptation reframes the current so-called “migrant crisis” by exploring its historical trajectory, its entanglement with global economics and politics of growing inequality, and notions of responsibility and affect. It also investigates the performance as a revival of the communal, oral, and aural performance of Old English poetry in the context of the recent resurgence of interest in early medieval literature, art, and culture in relation to a twenty-first century Britain eager to reframe its past.