A Colossus for Sea Peoples of the Future
The Mission to create a Colossus in the Saya de Malha.
“The Legend of Landi” is a film about the dream to create free city-states in international waters. It tells the origin story of a new civilisation at sea, a story of men who dared to assert their sovereignty and build societies beyond the boundaries of modern nations. This film is a call to others to continue the task.
Before the final frontier of space, we must first learn to live on the ocean if we are to have any hope in the barrenness of outer space.
My ultimate ambition with this film is to inspire a single person to create a city-state at sea. My curiosity has taken me across the world from Liberland, to Ocean Builders, to a platform in international waters in the Persian Gulf. These projects are in their infancy, but they may contain the seeds of a new civilisation.
At the heart of this story is Samuele Landi, a man who embodied the frontier spirit.
He moved to international waters and vowed never to return to land. His plan was to connect many shipping container barges together to form a piece of land that could grow organically and move anywhere.
I was the only person to live and film him and his crew in International waters, before his untimely demise…
Landi’s dream was to create a city-state in the Saya de Malha (a lost submerged continent in the Indian Ocean). Before he died I was planning to accompany him on a 1000 mile voyage to this remote part of the Indian Ocean. But it was not meant to be…
The Saya de Malha holds a mythical place in the imagination of would-be Seasteaders. Every committed Seasteader I interviewed in this documentary considers the Saya de Malha the ideal location to create a sovereign city-state. If a floating city will emerge, the Saya de Malha is the most likely option.
Every fledgling civilisation needs its heroes and foundational myths. They give a people a sense of history and destiny. My mission with this film is to immortalise Samuele Landi as one of the early pioneers in a movement to create city-states at sea. But a film is fleeting. I seek something greater. Something permanent. A monument to stand the test of time. The city-state of Samuele Landi’s dreams does not yet exist, it exists in my mind and now yours. But I will bring it into reality.
I will lay the first piece.
Throughout history, civilisations express their ambitions through symbolic beginnings. In 1248 Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden aspired to build the largest cathedral in Europe. He chose the location and laid the cornerstone, but in 1473 a lack of funds halted the project. It was not until 600 years later that construction resumed and the Cologne Cathedral was completed in 1880. The Cathedral is now Germany’s most visited landmark and is the tallest twin spired church in the world. Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden's dream was fulfilled 600 years later.
It is my dream that a floating city will emerge at the Saya de Malha. My plan is to construct the head of a colossus of Samuele Landi - it will be 3m high in Bronze.
The idea came to me in a dream.
In the dream I was flying above the Saya de Malha. I saw the submerged giant bronze head of Samuele Landi. In the dream a piratical band of men took to the high seas searching for the head of Samuele Landi. Once they found it, they pulled it up from the depths and built a full colossus. Around the colossus a new city emerged.
I wondered: what if this was not merely a nighttime fantasy but a premonition? A vision of the future. My role in the dream was not to make the colossus but to plant the seed of this civilisation. Thus I was chosen to carry out this task. It has been written.
I set about looking for a group of sculptors capable of rendering such a bold vision in bronze. I came across Atelier Missor, the last classical foundry in France keeping the flame of tradition alive.
Work has started. They have neared completion of the bronze prototype of Samuele Landi.
This is their progress:
This is just the beginning. Now I begin the hunt for inspired patrons to help fund the 3m colossus head.
In the realm of infinite possibility there exists a path in which the colossus of Landi overlooks the Saya de Malha. An awe-inspiring work of art, a testament that dreams and aspirations can never die.
Ideas lie dormant in books, in bronze, in dreams - they wait for a human vessel capable of making them reality.
This film will be complete once a bronze head of Samuele Landi is resting in the Saya de Malha. There it will wait for the emergence of a soul bold enough to build a floating city.
Perhaps it will be you.