Raft

Raft
Yanira Castro | a canary torsi

Location: EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman

Installation hours:
- Thu April 23, 11AM–10PM
- Fri April 24, 11AM–10PM
- Sat April 25, 11AM–6PM

Group activations (installation closes for these shared experiences):
- Thu April 23, 8PM (starts at listed time; RSVP required; lasts roughly 60–75 minutes)
- Fri April 24, 4PM (starts at listed time; RSVP required; lasts roughly 60–75 minutes)

Installation: On view outside of performance times; no RSVP necessary.
Activation: Free, with RSVP.

Can we hold our relationships to one another as sacred? How do we respond to our environment and effect change? What can we build together from a faltering world?

At once a sacred mountain and a social microcosm, this sensitive environment—constructed from the detritus of imperialism—invites visitors to build the responses that might carry us home. Meant to be collectively inhabited, Raft is an emergent space inspired in part by Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, a painting that frames the horrors that unfold when human lives are treated as expendable. Whether arriving alone or as part of a group activation, visitors are invited to take action, to gather, to take stock of who is present, and consider what must be done.

In this installation premiere, Yanira Castro and team—including Kathy Couch, RPI alum Stephan Moore, Ariel Lembeck, LD DeArmon, and access doula Marielys Burgos Meléndez—craft a world meant to be felt and moved through, where visitors enter into a dialogue with the actions of others who came before. Intimate voices are embedded inside the installation, interwoven with sounds from Castro’s archipelago origins. Participants can contribute to this expanding archive of recorded stories by sharing their own early memories of soil and dirt.

The installation can be experienced fully in either group or open hours, or both.