The raft is now fully hijacked, marooned for its broader symbolic potential, and as a platform to enact shared vulnerability and the possibilities of generosity. MARP was originally conceived as an artistic vehicle to bring some fine foreign ‘others’ into Australia, rather than ship them out – a simple act of generosity on a micro level. MARP is also a work to bring others on board.

The sense of inequality of safety and privilege in movement is a call to action for the artists – a cry for orientation, a desperate call to the gods. The performance work that plays out on the stationary, marooned raft is ‘anchored’ more in the raft’s symbolic potential – an improvised vessel for transporting with a destination in mind, and the daunting but sometimes exciting potential of going off course to arrive somewhere unintended, to even disappear in the enactment.

MARP raft was sited on the almost littoral dry zone between VCA and ACCA, with blue tarpaulins, maroon tents, an open kitchen. Think smell, smoke, and incidental engagement. Small orange Origami boats pass from hand to hand. Around midday, a memory and medley of sound and song emerges through the colour: Code Maroon (All God’s Beggars) begins. The relative emptiness of the site’s surrounds is open to visitation, to whoever may interact, perform, or simply occupy.

Full 25min video document here