PROTECT THIS LAND
#SaVE SANTA VERNA 2025
PROTEST PERFORMANCE
On Saturday, 1 Nov. 2025, MALTA-ARCH produced the
Activist Performance: Protect this Land at the Santa Verna Temple
in Xagħra, Gozo, featuring:
Marlene Saliba, Yoshida Shuntaro, Izabela Klara Biskupska,
Ingrid Jahn, and Dawn Adrienne Saliba.
Activist Performance: Protect this Land at the Santa Verna Temple
in Xagħra, Gozo, featuring:
Marlene Saliba, Yoshida Shuntaro, Izabela Klara Biskupska,
Ingrid Jahn, and Dawn Adrienne Saliba.
The performance was a highly interactive mythic combination of poetry, dance and song. Its purpose was to draw attention to the archaeological and ecological destruction threatening the Għajn Lukin plateau and Ta’ Lablab caves near the temple.
Before the performance, Dr. Dawn Adrienne Saliba (who also curated and directed the performance) gave a tour of the site, pointing out the location of hidden or excavated features (such as a conical tiled underground pit or the location of Neolithic & Medieval burials). She also elaborated on the developmental threats facing the plateau.
The show began with performers embodying archetypical 'Fates' who engaged the audience in imagined ritualized contexts. They were joined by dancer Shuntaro Yoshida, whose movements were as inspired by the ecology as the archaeology.
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The Fates then led a funerary procession regarding the destruction Għajn Lukin has already faced from the construction of nearby stables. This led to a lamentation at the megaliths, further triggered by the presence of cranes in the distance. Heavy, Butoh inspired movements shaped the Fates' expressions of grief. However, the sight of remaining natural elements~ sun, snail, cloud, fennel~ renewed their hope, and they began a Pizzica inspired dance allowing for the return of joy.
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The Fates then led the audience into the interior of the temple, engaging them in imagined ritualized contexts, creating visceral, embodied, experiences that were woven into a sensory tapestry.
Poetic text was performed onsite, often orated while moving through or around the temple’s architectural spaces.
Marlene Saliba’s Maltese & English poetry, drawn from her Xbihat tal-Antenati / Ancestral Visions collection, perfectly encapsulates the show's theme:
…we loyally protect our legacy
from being pilfered and profaned
by thieves and vandals
…we loyally protect our legacy
from being destroyed by encroaching development
and by the toll of the elements--
the mystery flows on in our veins.
…we loyally protect our legacy
from being pilfered and profaned
by thieves and vandals
…we loyally protect our legacy
from being destroyed by encroaching development
and by the toll of the elements--
the mystery flows on in our veins.
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In between Marlene Saliba’s poetry, Shuntaro Yoshida's improvisational ecology-driven choreography was an additional testimony to the powers of resistance.
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Izabela Klara Biskupska also performed her own poetry, veritably embodying the archetype of the divine feminine. Her opening piece revealed a self shattered by the fracturing forces of the discompassionate patriarchy. But by the end of the performance, she, too, transforms her despair into power--finding enduring lovers in the wind, sea, sun, sky, earth.
Ingrid Jahn led the audience through powerful phenomenological experiences. Spectators became ritual participants, communing within the ancient temple, especially when they read her inscribed messages and experienced her acts of “oracular divination”.
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Dawn Adrienne Saliba also performed her poetry and music. Deep emotions regarding the preservation of this archaeological landscape were expressed. As she says, "The area is not just important to me through a cultural heritage lens. It is also sacred to me personally--even more so because of the transformative archaeological discoveries already madethere and its potential to advance scientific and cultural knowledge for generations to come."
Within these stones are the bones of those
who were known to this land.
The women who gave birth
on this land.
The men who strained their backs
raising crops on this land.
The children who laughed and played
and were laid to rest in this land.
Today, the descendants of the ancestors
who built upon this great land
have forgotten their forefathers
and lost their mothers;
betraying and reneging their ties to this land.
Instead, they have invented and injected
infected concrete into the land.
Raising metal cranes
poisoning our rains
pouring asphalt and sulphur
upon lizards and snakes.
Cigarettes choke egrets
bullets rip wings.
The aroused and engorged slaughter the trees,
desecrating megaliths
infusing us with toxic venom.
Asbestos. Arsenic. Cancer. Dust.
Kali ma! Om Allah! The Black Madonna!
Save us!
Suck the sickness from our souls.
Extract the toxins from our core.
Keep this earth green.
Save this land.
Protect this land.
Teach others to love and respect this land.
And above all--petition to save this sweet land.
But perhaps Marlene Saliba's poetry best captures the performance's reminder to hope:
In borrowed time
an ancient vision waits
to be fired again to life
With the heat of billion suns;
a billion dreams
that have returned
to greet the earth.
In borrowed time
an ancient vision waits
to be fired again to life
With the heat of billion suns;
a billion dreams
that have returned
to greet the earth.
As Dr. Saliba explains: "Bringing together movement, poetry, song, archaeology engagement, and 'artivism', this project explores how artistic practice can activate local communities to respond to the threat of ecological and archaeological destruction. This piece, and the activist context from which it emerges, endeavours to demonstrate how embodied performance can simultaneously function as modes of liminal communion, self transformation, collective memory and identity formation, social witnessing, and political resistance."
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The performance, set within ruins and the soon-to-be damaged landscape, is also catalyzed by what Dr. Yoshida terms "wild agencies appearing as resistance."
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Izabela Klara Biskupska's closing refrain--the wind is my lover, the sea is my lover, the sun is my lover—is poetic mantra and incantation. The repeated invocation and evocation of elemental forces serves as a somatic healing rite--a prayer of recovery from the merged violences that both inflict pain upon female bodies and unleash environmental trauma and catastrophe upon the land (aka 'Mother Earth'). Her communion with nature enables peace and actualizes power.
It is only after this apotheosis that the Fates' Ġustizzja għal Artna! chant ("Justice for the Land" in Maltese) can be sounded. [Ġustizzja għal Artna! is the rallying cry of thousands of protestors led by Moviment Graffiti, the progenitors of Malta's radical, collective movement against environmental malfeasance.] As the Fates whisper, they 'channel' the ancestral spirits of the temple, summoning them to cast an envisioned spell of protection over the ancient village's land. Voices crescendo, binding bind ecological grief with the fierce call for collective action and environmental justice.
It is only after this apotheosis that the Fates' Ġustizzja għal Artna! chant ("Justice for the Land" in Maltese) can be sounded. [Ġustizzja għal Artna! is the rallying cry of thousands of protestors led by Moviment Graffiti, the progenitors of Malta's radical, collective movement against environmental malfeasance.] As the Fates whisper, they 'channel' the ancestral spirits of the temple, summoning them to cast an envisioned spell of protection over the ancient village's land. Voices crescendo, binding bind ecological grief with the fierce call for collective action and environmental justice.
In the dénouement, the performance ended with an invitation to tribal dance followed by a “prehistoric” feast made of up of many of the same indigenous Maltese ingredients available on the islands millennia ago. The audience enjoyed a stew made of barley, lentils, and peas drizzled with honey and sea salt. On the side were flat bread, goat cheese, olives, and pomegranate seeds. Thankfully, it was well-received!
However, dancing to the drums was the best part of the finale!
All in all, MALTA-ARCH's Protect this Land performance was a lovely (if exhausting) experience. However, as of this writing, Malta's Planning Authority has incomprehensibly approved the building of 12 masionettes and an underground parking garage in the Ta' Lablab area containing ancient caves and Neolithic burial pit. We are all in shock, and quite frankly, disgusted. However, our small performance and acts of political resistance still matter. At the very least, we can create meaningful art out of sheer madness and salvage our souls from the vicissitudes of ignorance, callousness, hurtfulness, and greed by forging connections with good, honest, caring, ethical, kind, and committed people. The fight goes on.
