The 360-degree perspective in Sea Prayer allows for an immersive experience in which a human-centred narrative can be acutely shared. Viewers are welcomed into the space of Alan Kurdi’s family, with his father narrating the world. Despite the position of the viewer being distant from the illustration, his voice invites you to walk alongside them through their day-to-day. His father’s description enables you to touch the rough stone walls of the farmhouse while feeling the pale sun on your skin and hearing the streaming creek behind you. Walking into town, you hear the chants coming from the mosques and churches. Entering the market, you feel the crowds rushing around you while individuals brush past while you hold a cool gold pendant in your hand and smell the produce market further down the lane. After this pleasurable journey, the tune changes and you crumble along with this distant memory of what was, as fear and anxiety creep in with protests, and eventually the devastation of bombs and destruction. You are then transported to a beach where you can hear the multiple tongues of different refugees around you. Some speaking calmly, some with panic, others with desperation, all overlaying each other. Words enter your mind as they enter his: ‘uninvited,’ ‘unwelcome,’ ‘unfortunate.’ In a moment, your heart aches, as the narrator recalls the words of his wife: “but if they saw my darling even half of what you have, they would say kinder things surely.” Then, we hear the prayer of Alan’s father beside us in the boat as he holds his child, “I pray the sea knows that you are precious cargo.” The sea roars, rises, laps up, and washes over me with devastation, hopelessness and heartbreak.
Through these various sensory descriptors, the audience is invited to be immersed in the experience of the refugee and feel even an ounce of the experience of the narrator and those around him. Yet, the distance of the illustration reinforces the idea that while this experience is profound, the audience is fixed in a distant perspective— creating a divide between the refugee and those that empathize with their experience. Through the narrator’s words and his spoken description of the story, we are invited to be alongside him. This runs parallel to the experience of hearing about refugee narratives as news events or covered in journals. These stories are impactful, but of course, only at a distance. While these stories can be internalized to a certain extent, they cannot replace the reality and hardship of lived experience.
