Interview by Eleni Nearchou
NECROPOLIS is an ongoing choreographic and documentary work about unknown bodies – a poignant reflection on the ongoing human tragedy at Europe’s borders. By integrating data analysis, choreographic gestures, and documentary practices, Arkadi Zaides and his team delve into the practice of forensics to conceive a new virtual depository mapping the remains of the many whose deaths remain to this day mostly unacknowledged. This archive, revealing a cartography made invisible, stretches across space and time, weaving together the mythologies, histories, geographies and anatomies of those who have found their way to NECROPOLIS. Although there are no bodies to dance with in the city of the dead, it is precisely this absence – the collective body of NECROPOLIS – that Zaides brings to life.
We spoke with Arkadi Zaides, who’s going to perform “Necropolis”, on the stage of Rialto Theatre, in the framework of the Open House Festival 2025, keeping alive the memory of those who lost their lives in search of better days.
Necropolis…Why “Necropolis”. What does the topic of your performance deal with?The Necropolis project originated from the discovery of the UNITED List of Refugee Deaths, meticulously compiled by UNITED for Intercultural Action—a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations across Europe. Since 1993, its members have assembled one of the most comprehensive records of the thousands of individuals, most of them unidentified, who have lost their lives on migratory routes toward Europe. Necropolis centers on commemorating and mourning these lives—a collective whose presence has increasingly faded from public discourse since the so-called “refugee crisis,” even as deaths and disappearances on migratory routes continue to rise.
The title of the project comes from an ancient word for a burial ground: Necropolis, the “city of the dead.” Symbolically, it evokes an invisible and silenced community that challenges us, the living, to face our responsibility toward them. At the same time, it activates the imaginative power of the word itself: a mythical city not bound to a single place but existing as a meta-structure—a cemetery of cemeteries—casting its shadow over Europe’s history and geography.
Where no autopsy was performed and no name recorded, the stage offers a symbolic substitute: a ritual of recognition denied in life.
What motivated you to create a performance with this theme?The motivation for Necropolis comes from the urgent need to confront the silence surrounding the countless lives lost on Europe’s migratory routes—lives often reduced to numbers or rendered invisible altogether. The project responds to this absence by seeking ways to commemorate, document, and give presence to those who have been excluded from public memory.
Conceived as an ongoing research project, Necropolis unfolds primarily outside the theatre space, with each performance serving as an interim report within a broader effort to map the morbid architecture of this emerging city of the dead. Central to this inquiry is the practice of grave-location search—the precise geo-localization of graves belonging to people who lost their lives on the EU’s borders. This practice involves a combination of archival research and site-specific investigation conducted in collaboration with the artistic structures who invite the project, as well as local communities, NGOs, and cemetery authorities. Each presentation of the project in a new location thus expands the growing archive of documented graves, transforming it into a cartography of absence and erasure that challenges the invisibility of these deaths within official narratives.
The resulting ever-evolving archive not only records the locations of graves but also lays bare the bureaucratic, political, and technological infrastructures that determine who is mourned, remembered, or left unmarked. By bringing this documentation into public view, Necropolis seeks to weave together acts of testimony, remembrance, and resistance—turning the stage into a temporary forum for reckoning with the violence inscribed in the European border regime.
What elements do we spot in your performance?The performance unfolds in two parts, each addressing a distinct dimension of forensics. The first part turns to the forensics of the landscape—a cartographic practice that reimagines European territory by mapping the burial sites of those who perished while attempting to reach it. Projected on stage as pins across a Google Earth interface, these graves are not mere coordinates but markers of systemic failure, forming an unofficial map of Europe shaped not by its political borders but by its fatal thresholds. This act of mapping resists erasure, revealing lives that have been erased from official discourse yet remain painfully inscribed in lived experience.
The second part shifts to the forensics of the body, staging a simulated forensic examination that follows the choreography of an identification process. In contrast to the abstraction of the first part, this section draws the audience into intimate proximity with the physical consequences of border violence by assembling objects that gradually resemble a human corpse. Here, the performance seeks to restore dignity, focusing attention on bodies routinely neglected by institutional systems and deprived of the process of identification. Where no autopsy was performed and no name recorded, the stage offers a symbolic substitute: a ritual of recognition denied in life.
Unfortunately, we live in the moment when culture faces continuous pressure: budgets are shrinking, institutional support is precarious, and the freedom to take risks, especially in the arts, is increasingly constrained.
How is “Necropolis” idolised by the people who are trying to reach it?The shipwreck that occurred on October 3, 2013, off the coast of Lampedusa could mark the beginning of the so-called “migration crisis.” Following the disaster, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta granted Italian citizenship to the 372 individuals who had lost their lives. At the same time, the 155 survivors from the very same ship were placed in a detention center, stripped of rights. This event testifies to the tragic paradox of Europe as both a site of desire and a site of death. For many who attempt the crossing, Europe is imagined as a place of protection, prosperity, and dignity—a land worth risking one’s life for. Yet, in reality, it often reveals itself as a “Necropolis,” a city of the dead, where belonging is conferred only after death, while survival is met with suspicion, confinement within bureaucratic and physical borders, dehumanisation, and exclusion.
It’s very interesting that your performance has a value of a document; it’s an ongoing choreographic and documentary work about unknown bodies who try to reach Europe, aspiring to save their lives from what’s going on in their homeland, seeking a better future. What challenges do you face while developing your work under the “ongoing” condition?The obvious challenge in developing Necropolis under this “ongoing” condition is that the very information we are seeking—names, locations, traces of lives—is systematically made invisible. European border regimes actively obscure and normalize these ongoing deaths, treating them as statistical inevitabilities rather than human tragedies. In other words, the more these deaths continue, the more their erasure becomes institutionalized, making our archival and choreographic work an act of resistance.
Furthermore, the expansion of the archive we are assembling depends entirely on the circulation of the performance. In this sense, Necropolis is like many artworks that evolve through encounter and context—but here, the stakes are particularly tangible: for more graves to be found and geolocalized, the project must continue traveling to new localities where site-specific research can be carried out in collaboration with communities, NGOs, and other actors on the ground. Each performance generates new insights, deepening the archive and ensuring that these lives are documented and remembered.
Unfortunately, we live in the moment when culture faces continuous pressure: budgets are shrinking, institutional support is precarious, and the freedom to take risks, especially in the arts, is increasingly constrained. Programming works that engage uncompromisingly with political questions is ever more challenging. Programmers are afraid to take risks and are pushed by their funding bodies to prioritize safe, marketable productions that guarantee audience numbers and avoid controversy, rather than works that demand critical reflection or confront uncomfortable truths.
A hope for the near future?It is hard to be optimistic at the moment, as the genocide in Israel–Palestine, a region where I lived for much of my life, continues with devastating force. Yet Necropolis itself embodies a form of hope: the hope that through collective memory, testimony, and artistic practice we can resist erasure and reclaim spaces for mourning and accountability. My wish is that this project will continue to grow as a shared endeavor, expanding through the contributions of local communities, activists, and institutions across different geographies. In doing so, it may help build transnational solidarities that counter the fragmentation and fear fostered by the current political climate. If there is hope, it lies in the possibility that art can create temporary spaces of recognition—however fragile—where the dead are not forgotten, and where the living are called to imagine a different future.
NECROPOLIS (FR)
Arkadi Zaides
Performance
Saturday 04/10/2025
20:30 | Duration: 45’
Rialto Theatre
Tickets: €10–12 @ rialto.interticket.com
Age: 16+
English with Greek surtitles
For more info about the festival, here.
