Inside the Greek lab working to uncover the lost identities of migrants
Identifying the Displaced, a new film by Harry Lawson soundtracked by Batu, takes a close-up look at the Alexandroupoli team using forensic analysis to humanise migrant stories and dignify them in death.
In a white-walled lab in Alexandroupoli, Greece, Dr Maria Maclennan leans over and peers through a magnifying glass, taking a closer look at a gold ring. Gently moving it around with white latex gloves, she’s looking for any tiny inscriptions, prints or clues that can help illuminate details about the person it had belonged to. The ring was found on the body of a migrant who had lost their life while moving around the treacherous Evros River region that separates Turkey and Greece, but as they didn’t carry any official documents, they were unable to be identified.
Dr Maclennan, a forensic jeweller and lecturer in Jewellery and Silversmithing at The University of Edinburgh, is the Principal Investigator at Identifying The Displaced – a project that pieces together the identities of people who die in the area. Since 2002, there have been 550 deaths in the Evros region, with 60 percent of them still without formal identification. By examining the personal belongings found on them – jewellery, clothing, wallets – Dr Maclennan, along with Dr Jan Bikker and Professor Pavlos Pavlidis, work to dignify and humanise the stories of those who are otherwise ignored, forgotten or reduced to a statistic.
A new film that Crack is premiering, Identifying The Displaced, takes a close-up look at the work Dr Maclennan and her colleagues do. Created by filmmaker Harry Lawson, it features sound design by Omar McCutcheon, a.k.a. Bristol-based DJ and producer Batu.
Watch the film and read our interviews with Harry, Omar and Maria below.
Harry Lawson
How did you get into filmmaking, and what other films have you worked on before?
I started gravitating towards film about ten years ago when I was in my last year at university. I knew I wanted to make something about dementia and care work as my grandma was living with the condition. My grandma passed away but I stuck around at her care home and spent the next few years filming as much as I could. That became a film called Margaret.
I learned a lot through filming at music festivals, culminating in Meat Rack, which is a portrait of NYC Downlow at Glastonbury. I also made a film about Sunday League football for Mundial (featuring a soundtrack by Metrist). Most recently I made a three-screen installation about Millwall and the relationship between football and community in south-east London.
What drew you to documentary filmmaking in particular?
What attracted me from the start was getting to spend time – sometimes lots of it – with people you wouldn’t have met otherwise. My ideal projects take a long time and rely on the relationships I have with those involved. If there is a through line, it would be that I typically spend time embedded within a community. The film is then a kind of community portrait. That makes Identifying The Displaced a bit of an outlier.
How did you get involved with Identifying the Displaced? And what story are you telling with the film portion of the project?
Identifying The Displaced is an interdisciplinary research project focused on personal effects in the context of migration. I got involved after seeing Maria post about the project on Instagram. It was one of those moments in which you can’t resist reaching out. It’s just a fascinating project, and a real humanitarian effort.
I was immediately interested in the contrast of scales at the project’s centre. On one end, migration – or the so-called migration crisis in Europe – [is] a subject too large and sprawling to understand, often reported on in a way that dehumanises people on the move. And on the other, [it focuses on] very small, personal effects, stuff we all have and use every day. The location added to this effect; the laboratory is a cold, impersonal place, the mortuary even more so. There was tension between the environment and the familiar everyday objects like wallets, bracelets, necklaces and watches.
The dehumanisation that occurs in lots of reporting on migration, including on a massive scale in films like Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow, doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of filming aerial shots of people walking through the landscape, reducing people to a tiny dot, why not experience things in the extreme close-up? I think the objects are powerful because they force you to consider the life of a real person. Reading mortality statistics is a lot easier to glaze over and forget about. My film isn’t an aggressive one, but it hopefully confronts viewers with the stark reality of life at the border. I was interested in the idea of felt absence. How much of that person can you know through the things they leave behind?
How did you connect with Maria and Omar?
I met Maria several years ago filming in Dundee and we stayed in touch. Omar and I have a very dear mutual friend called Joe, who introduced us knowing we’d get along. The task was a pretty tough one with regards to sound design because of the subject matter. We found that anything on the higher end of the frequency spectrum, and anything with a specific emotional feel – whether that be downbeat or uplifting – felt over the top. The story of these objects is so concentrated with meaning it doesn’t need pads or synths to do any heavy lifting. I love the sound design as is, kind of bubbling beneath the surface.
I remember walking around the corridors of the hospital between shooting scenes and the place itself had an incredible, eerie sound. I took a bunch of field recordings and they became a template for certain moments in Omar’s sound.
Did you encounter any stumbling blocks along the way? How did you work through these?
Working for ten days in a mortuary was a unique situation for me, and came with its obvious challenges. On a very basic level, I hadn’t been confronted with death like that before. Maria is a great collaborator and very empathetic person – she understands that spending that amount of time in a mortuary isn’t normal for most people. That support allows you to respond to the emotional resonances of a horrible situation, which was essentially the purpose of this film.
A big challenge came in depicting one of the most important objects in the film, a dummy. I had a long shot in the edit in which it is slowly turned around, revealing a ‘Wee Baby’ logo. This revelation had the unintentional effect of lowering the impact of moments before and after it. It was like a wrecking ball, so concentrated was its emotional heft. The solution was to cut the shot in half, leaving a pretty abstract orb-like image lingering on the screen. Some people realise what it is, some don’t – I see it as the centre of the film.
Omar McCutcheon
How did you first get involved in the project?
Harry and I’s friendship first started through a mutual friend. I think we first met in a tent at Freerotation. When we spoke more at a later point, it was clear that there might be a space for us to work together one day – Harry is a director very interested in sound and music, I’m a music producer very interested in working with moving images and film. A little while later he got in touch about Identifying The Displaced.
What was the process behind the sound? Where did you look for inspiration or ideas?
We spoke about various concepts and ideas before I laid the groundwork for the sound. I knew with Harry something restrained would be important. I wanted to bring attention to the lab space and the sterile, eerie nature those kinds of environments have. The more visceral side of asylum seekers coming to Europe feels very detached from the cold silence of a lab, and I thought it could be nice to bring attention to this juxtaposition.
What was the process of making a soundtrack for a film?
This is the first film I’ve really done sound for, so I made many mistakes. Getting the tone and minimalism Harry desired wasn’t instant. It was mostly a case of subtraction; my initial sketch had way too much going on. In hindsight, I think I was trying to add too much of my own ideas onto the footage rather than just complimenting what the images are saying.
How does the way you approach a project such as this differ or relate to your solo work as an artist?
Whether it’s working with a vocalist or a film director, I think the key is listening to them and understanding their vision. You’re trying to help fulfil their goals and you’re one part of a machine which is assisting in realising this creative vision. To me that role is so refreshing and creative because when you’re left to your own devices, you can fall into the same workflows and stay in your comfort zone. It also takes the pressure off being entirely self-sufficient in your creative decisions. These differences after ten years of releasing music mostly solo are really nice.
Dr Maria Maclennan
Could you tell us a little about who you are and what you do?
I am an award-winning interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and educator. I’m currently a lecturer in Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), part of The University of Edinburgh. My research interests concern the role of jewellery in forensic and criminal contexts, and the use of design in facilitating collaboration across diverse fields such as forensic science, policing, government, and education.
I obtained my PhD in Forensic Jewellery from The University of Dundee in 2018, a unique partnership between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, the V&A Dundee, and The Institute for Capitalising on Creativity at The University of St Andrews. As the world’s first forensic jeweller, I regularly provide support and advice to international policing agencies on the identification and repatriation of jewellery recovered with human remains.
How did the Identifying the Displaced project come to be?
We all have the right to a name; yet the fragmented identities of thousands of missing and unidentified migrants lay tragically scattered along Mediterranean coastlines. Many people on the move who die whilst attempting to enter Europe lose their lives to the ‘River of Death’ – a particularly treacherous migratory route separating Turkey and Evros, north Greece. Devastatingly, human remains are often decomposed, making visual recognition extremely difficult. DNA is often required to establish identity beyond reasonable doubt; however, many families may not know the trajectory of their loved one’s journey, or who to contact for information. Both decomposition and lack of ante-mortem data for comparison can hamper identification efforts – especially across borders – limiting opportunities to reunite families and missing loved ones.
Personal belongings such as jewellery, watches, and glasses often survive the deceased: personal treasures, protective talisman, or alternative currencies for the journey ahead. While not sufficient on their own in identifying the nameless, the unique and traceable nature of many items can serve to support identification through ‘primary’ means (DNA, fingerprinting, dental), unlocking a myriad of clues as to individuals’ names, lives, and migratory routes. Told through the objects carried with individuals on their journey, the heart of Identifying the Displaced is a database of more than 390 personal belongings which currently reside in the mortuary at The General University Hospital of Alexandroupolis. Each case study is accompanied by a unique first-person narrative: an attempt to humanise every individual story and personal journey by gifting individuals with the ability to ‘speak’ once more, bringing visibility to hundreds of identities otherwise erased.
“The belongings of the deceased, rich with narrative potential, offer a relatable and empathetic lens to humanise migrant stories and identities” – Dr Maria Maclennan
Could you tell us about the research project behind the film, and the reason behind choosing to incorporate a film into this work?
Despite the fact personal effects may possess sentimental significance to families and evidential value to investigations, the potential contribution of objects is frequently overlooked by authorities. There is thus a compelling need to develop new methodologies to promote understanding surrounding the value of items. The ethos behind Identifying the Displaced holds that the belongings of the deceased, rich with narrative potential, offer a more relatable and empathetic lens through which to humanise migrant stories and identities – real things that occupy otherwise vanquished spaces.
How will the project continue in the future?
We hope to expand the database for use by pathologists on a variety of the Greek islands, to help improve identification practices related to migration across other parts of Greece.
Find out more about Identifying the Displaced at its official website.
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