Pandataria is an island belonging to the Pontine archipelago, in the Tyrrhenian Sea and measures 1.54 km2.
At the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the women of the empire who did not conform to the norms (adulterous, powerful, independent, political) were exiled to Pandataria to keep the image of authority clean. Julia the Elder was the first and later came her daughter, and her granddaughter at different times in her life. Life in exile on such a small island without the possibility of leaving could be very boring and suffocating, but as an island-prison Pandataria came to represent the paradise of the forgotten.
After the Roman Empire, in 1941, three men named Spinelli, Rossi and Colorni, ended up on the same island-prison under the orders of Mussolini. They had questioned the dictator’s rise to power and had been exiled to Pandataria, which had already changed its name to Ventotene. There, following in the footsteps of Julia the Greater and her descendants, they found their own paradise and wrote the text that would be the breeding ground for the Europe we know today; the Ventotene manifesto, whose full title is “For a free and united Europe.” It is curious that in a square kilometer surrounded by the Tyrrhenian Sea, and with insurmountable physical and ideological borders, the three men dreamed of eliminating all borders from the continent.
And that is Pandataria: the catchall, the island-prison, the island of the marginalized, those who are not part of the norm, those who are defective, those who are not legal citizens, the island of the unwanted, those who shake the world, the invalids. There are no instructions to differentiate the valid and those who are not, but we always recognize transgression and we separate it, we lock it up on an island of one square kilometer out of fear of anything different.
“…the island of the unwanted, those who shake the world…”.
Duration: to be confirmed.
Recommended age: Adult public, over 18 years old.
