PORTAGE (2019-2021)
RAFT | FLOTILLA | SHELTER2CAMP | REFUGIUM | FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE CENTRE FOR REWORLDING
Disasters are a terrible time to learn new skills
Excerpt from Arts House’s REFUGE 2021 short documentary. Listen to Jen Rae along with collaborators talk about PORTAGE in year 2.
Commissioned by Arts House for REFUGE: DISPLACEMENT and REFUGE: 2021
Decades of echoing sirens and warnings from the global scientific community on climate change have gone unanswered. In the next decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we are going to see increasing climatic events with compounding and unprecedented economic, social, and political impacts that will affect livelihoods and ways of life. To borrow Margaret Atwood’s declaration, we are no longer talking about climate change, we are facing “everything change”.
PORTAGE asks What are the skills and knowledges that will be the most coveted as the climate emergency deepens and affects you and your communities? Who will you/we turn to for help? What are the skills and knowledges you can contribute?
Portage is the act of carrying a boat and its cargo between navigable waters. ‘To portage’ is work together – to secure your belongings to your body and to carry your vessel over land in unison to the next destination. Each arrival point determines the next destination. As a metaphor, we use the idea of portage as a means of coming together.
PORTAGE is a multi-platform project in four stages: Raft, Flotilla, Shelter2Camp and First Assembly of the Centre for Reworlding. It offers survival skill workshops that explore in tangible ways the themes of displacement, evacuation, mobilisation, and shelter, allowing the public a visceral experience to the potential upheavals wrought by climate catastrophe. The project seeks to unearth overlooked skills, knowledges and values that might offer salvation in the years ahead. Both timely and willing to take the long view, PORTAGE is a call to mobilise, collaborate and arrive at purpose.
Each of these works are grounded in First Nations knowledge systems and protocols, exploring themes around colonial trauma, climate breakdown and intergenerational justice.
Collaborators include Mittul and Munir Vahanvati from Giant Grass (RAFT - Y1), Marco Cher-Gibard (sound Y1 + Y2), Claire G. Coleman (REFUGIUM + FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE CENTRE FOR REWORLDING) and weavers Aunties Vicki Couzens, Vicki Kinai, Bronwyn Rezam and Muhubo Sulieman (SHELTER and SHELTER2CAMP - Y2). Over 200 people participated in the RAFT, SHELTER (Y1) and SHELTER2CAMP workshops including local community groups from the Carlton, Kensington, North Melbourne and Flemington estates, Red Cross and SES professionals, government workers, museum and academic staff, friends and family.
2019
RAFT (Y1) is a series of co-building workshops using materials from our natural and built environments to build two large-scale water vessels. Over five days, 100 people worked together to build and assemble the rafts. Each workshop commences with an induction to learn basic building skills (e.g. lashing, joinery, splitting, tying, binding, cutting, etc) using bamboo, hand tools, and rope, followed by construction and assembly activities. The co-built rafts form Flotilla, an immersive installation for audiences to experience and to reflect upon the imminent climate refugee crisis. Each day, catered lunches provided by local community members.
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FLOTILLA (Y1) is an immersive installation comprised of the co-built and assembled rafts from the co-building RAFT workshops. Audiences will be led into the space to experience what it feels like to be in close proximity with strangers, adrift in darkness. Honing in, a 12-minute multi-channel soundscape takes the audience through a meditational arc of sounds that are disorientating as they intensify. Tensions ease as the familiar emerges and calm washes over. Sound design by Marco Cher-Gibard. Listen to the FLOTILLA soundscape - best with headphones.
“In Flotilla, the audience experiences a 12-minute journey propelled by Marco Cher-Gibard’s intense sound score. What starts with the simplicity of a beckoning church bell builds to a maniacal cacophony of alarms, sirens and emergency announcements, hurling those of us on the rafts deep into the centre of an unspecified crisis. Reaching a crescendo where the mind imagines near-apocalyptic scenarios, the sound gradually subsides to the gentle lapping of water, perhaps suggesting new beginnings.”
- Jennifer Barry (via Arts Hub review)
SHELTER (Y1 - Grasslands Weavers’ Walk and Workshop)
Master weavers: Aunties Vicki Kinai, Bronwyn Razem, Dr Vicki Couzens, Abshiro Hussein and Muhubo Sulieman
Commencing at Arts House, Jen Rae led a walk to the Royal Park Grasslands with the weavers in conversation with City of Melbourne Park Rangers to share stories and some of the utilitarian uses for local plants. Can we grow today the building supplies we might need in the future? What plants may be tolerable in a changing climate? We look to those who grow, study, observe and weave grasses as a starting point.
Following the walk, we reconvened at Arts House for an intimate workshop sharing more stories and experimenting with materials and weaving techniques. Aunties Vicki K., Bronwyn, Abshiro, Muhubo and Vicki C. shared their practices with the group and then invited people to come learn techniques.
(L to R) Aunty Vicki Couzens, Aunty Bronwyn Razem, Aunty Muhubo Sulieman, Jen Rae and Aunty Vicki Kinai
Photo: Anu Kumar
Portage: Shelter2Camp (2021) - documentation. Drone videography by Sam Mcgilip.
2021
More to come - in progress. To read more about Portage 2021 please visit Arts House.
In 2021, considering climate-related disaster impacts that are cumulative, sudden and/or unfolding over a long period of time, we asked What could a Melbourne-centric disaster shelter look/feel like? SHELTER2CAMP (photos above) was a series of hands-on co-building workshops in collaboration with Aunties Vicki Couzens, Vicki Kinai, Muhubo Sulieman and Bronwyn Razem and over 100 community participants (21-24 April 2021). Grounded in First Nations protocols, the workshops integrated Indigenous architectural and weaving techniques with vernacular architecture using materials sourced by City of Melbourne park rangers, volunteers and collaborators from the local natural and built environments.
Protocols of the workshop included acknowledging that Covid-19 was continuing to impact populations worldwide and that SHELTER2CAMP was a holding space for healing, care and recovery – an invitation to reconnect, relate and co-create; a space of reciprocity – the gifting of knowledge and skills, and the honouring of the gift in accepting.
When the world becomes volatile and collapse is on the horizon, it’s time to regroup. REFUGIUM is a video work exploring communication and moral dilemmas through a transtemporal Zoom call with the future. Jen Rae + Claire G. Coleman (27 April 2021 - live and online).
The First Assembly of the Centre for Reworlding is our destination point after two years of co-building together.
CREDITS
PORTAGE: RAFT (2019)
Lead Artist - Jen Rae in collaboration with Giant Grass (Mittul Vahanvati and Munir Vahanvati)
Special thank you to volunteers George Akl, Sione Francis, Veisinia Tonga and Marine Lacroix.
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PORTAGE: FLOTILLA (2019)
Lead Artist - Jen Rae
Sound: Marco Cher-Gibard
Special thank you to North Melbourne Language & Learning volunteer invigilators.
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PORTAGE: SHELTER - Weavers’ Walk and Workshop (2019)
Lead Artist - Jen Rae
In collaboration with Aunties Vicki Couzens, Vicki Kinai, Bronwyn Razem, Abshiro Hussein and Muhubo Sulieman
Producer: Naomi Velaphi
Special thank you to Paula Jorgensen, and City of Melbourne Park Rangers.
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PORTAGE: Shelter2Camp (2021)
Lead Artist - Jen Rae
In collaboration with Aunties Vicki Couzens, Vicki Kinai, Bronwyn Razem and Muhubo Sulieman
Producer: Naomi Velaphi
Production Managers: Dans Maree Sheehan and Richard Vabre
Special thank you to co-build team Oliver Strano, Chiara Paola Ratti, Annie Brien, Amaara Raheem, Kelsey Love, Sione Francis and Arkie Barrett as well as volunteers from the Red Cross and Victoria State Emergency Service (Footscray Unit).
REFUGIUM (2021)
Lead Artists - Jen Rae and Claire G. Coleman; Director/ Dramaturg - Kamarra Bell-Wykes; Video - Devika Bilimoria; Sound Marco Cher-Gibard; Video Graphics: Layerface and Wavebreak Media; Make-up: Danielle Ruth – wowfx; Hair - Tor Hellander
Commissioned by Arts House for Refuge 2021. This video transmission was part of First Assembly of the Centre for Reworlding, a participatory palaver event at Arts House on Tuesday 27 April 2021.
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FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE CENTRE FOR REWORLDING (2021)
Lead Artists - Jen Rae and Claire G. Coleman
Sound: Marco Cher-Gibard
Dramaturg and Director: Kamarra Bell-Wykes
Production Manager and Lighting Design: Richard Vabre
Moderator: Alex Kelly
Reworlders: Claire G. Coleman, Maree Grenfell, Alex Kelly, Jen Rae, Lauren Rickards, Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Angharad Wynne-Jones and Naomi Velaphi
Ceremony: A very special thank you to Aunty Vicki Couzens, Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, Aunty Vicki Kinai, Aunty Bronwyn Razem and Aunty Muhubo Sulieman for your guidance and generosity.
Ceremonial leis created by Veisinia Tonga.
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PHOTOS: Y1 photos by Bryony Jackson (Flotilla), Sarah Walker (Weavers walk and workshop), Duncan Jacob (RAFT workshops) and Harjono Djoyobisono (Weavers workshop, FLOTILLA rafts without passengers and people in lifevests). Y2 photos by Byrony Jackson (first SHELTER workshop) and Emma Byrnes (final SHELTER workshops and FIRST ASSEMBLY OF THE CENTRE FOR REWORLDING)
PORTAGE Video documentation: Martin Potter
3D and drone videography: Sam Mcgilp
Supported by – This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and supported by Auspicious Arts, The Venny; Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre; North Melbourne Language and Learning; Our Place Carlton; Kensington Neighbourhood House; Museums Victoria; and the City of Melbourne through the Park Rangers – Parks, Property and Waterway, and Arts House.
