The Raft CrimeA. Part 1. A Displaced Parliament of the Displaced.

August 19. Friday. 10 AM. Maria Kulikovska and people that wish to join her performance started to go in the Dnipro River on the «Raft CrimeA» that August 25 - on the Independence Day of Ukraine - to cross the invisible water borders of the EU, to get metaphorically across them, and to continue their journey on the rivers of Europe. But, at down on August 25, in Vylkove, Ukraine, the «Raft CrimeA» was stopped by the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. The performance ended prematurely.

Maria Kulikovska was living on the raft, deprived of any resources, only through support of people that care for her. The survival of the artist was dependent on compassion of other people that became the specific act through which Maria wanted to stress vulnerability of people that lost their homes and to appeal to the community to empathize with them. The «Raft CrimeA» was and is an alive dot on the map, which had become the place for meetings. It had been accepting all migrants, who needed a help or free place, where they would talk about their problems and thoughts.

The «Raft CrimeA» became a platform for discussion of urgent problems of immigrants and finding a way to solve them. The performance and social sculpture were made to collectively remember about the sensitivity and desperation of people that lost their own homeland and identity.

Thousands of people, who lost their homes, are moving the seas on their rafts or boats in the search for a new life. But they're the unwaited «there», and they always will be «alien» and «other» «there». A lot of people are moving the seas and oceans, and they're omitted from any maps. A phantom republic of immigrants. Anybody at any time can become its citizen. The «Raft CrimeA» is an embassy, parliament for/of all those who lost a voice, a place, a political representation.