Date & Location
May 16–18, 2018
Malmӧ, Sweden
May 16–18, 2018
Malmӧ, Sweden
Performance was held near the Ӧresund Bridge in Malmӧ during the period of the opening the Crimean Bridge between Russia and Crimea, spanning the Strait of Kerch.
In May 2018, near the Öresund Bridge, which is combined between Sweden and Denmark, the performance by Maria Kulikovska was held. This red dot on the map of the world is the «The Raft CrimeA» - a Displaced Parliament of the Displaced, on board of which the Crimean-Ukrainian artist was for a certain period of time.
The history with the «The Raft CrimeA» begins in summer 2016. From 16 to 19 August in Kyiv, Ukraine, among luxury restaurants and yachts, temporarily appeared the migratory Parliament of the Displaced «The Raft CrimeA» - a life raft with neon sign. On board the raft lived the Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska - a native Crimean, who received the status of the «displaced person» on 18 March 2014.
On August 19, Maria Kulikovska and people that wish to join her performance started to go in the Dnipro River on the «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 «The Raft CrimeA» was stopped by the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. The performance ended prematurely.
Maria 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 Kulikovska wanted to stress vulnerability of people that lost their homes and to appeal to the community to empathize with them. The «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 «The Raft CrimeA» is an embassy, parliament for/of all those who lost a voice, a place, a political representation.
On 15 May 2018, on the Crimean Bridge, whose construction was planned from the beginning of the Soviet Union, was inaugurated and opened the road for non-truck cars. This event was found to cause increased trauma for Maria Kulikovska, who has no opportunity to come back to native city Kerch. The Crimean artist was living in Sweden at that time - in a country with a neutral position in any wars, but which supplied arms to the military zones all over the world. A bridge, in the artist's mind, is a symbol of the connection, hope, risk of flight and shelter. Continuation of the Kulikovska's project «The Raft CrimeA» near the Öresund Bridge during the period of the opening the Crimean Bridge, spanning the Strait of Kerch, was a specific interpretation seemingly the same symbol, but in different contexts, in different roles, in the different/wrong hands.
