Boats

Engineer’s Cabin

A virtual first person shooter scenario centred on the imminent boarding of a civilian fishing boat by a platoon of armed military personnel. The subjectivity of the soldier is brought to the fore, suggesting that perhaps neutrality isn’t a position easily achieved. As the spectator enters the dark argument around perception and control of public opinion, they become implicated in a dialectic of violation and volition. Accompanying the monitor-based installation are framed photographs of other notable vessels, such as the ‘Tu Do’ (meaning ‘Freedom’), the Vietnamese boat that in 1976 carried one of the first ‘shipments’ of Vietnamese boat-people to Australia during the Vietnam war, and the Norwegian freighter ‘MV Tampa’, which in 2001 ushered in the current epoch of fixation on sovereign power and border ‘control’.