Marcella Vanzo’s fourteen-minute double video projection, Summertime (all works, 2007), focuses on two very different seasonal Mediterranean migrations: illegal immigrants from North Africa arrive on the shores of the Italian island of Lampedusa, while tourists land on the beaches of the nearby Greek island of Zakynthos. The projection begins with a panoramic view of an empty beach on Zakynthos, a rusted shipwreck in the background; the image fills both screens. The note of Janis Joplin singing George Gershwin’s “Summertime blend with the noise of the sea and the sound of cicadas in the sun.
Then the image splits in two. On one screen, Italian coast guard patrol boats appear, laden with refugees-silent, still, fully dressed, black. The people who fill the other screen are white; they wear
bathing suits and blast their portable radios, and when their boat docks, they jump into the water. The refugees descend slowly, with difficulty, in organized fashion-women and children on one side, men on the other. 
The two journeys proceed as if synchronized, each like a parody of the other. At one point, for example, a bottle of water is passed around in both boats. The tourists drink straight from the bottle; the refugees, from paper cups. As insignificant as the gesture may be, seeing these two scenes side by side is disturbing and depressing.