RAFT

I couldn't cast the RAFT aside, even after I had finished with it. In a way it had become my casket as well. First it carried me to blind safety and of course it took me beyond places most would understand. I was drowning in the desert and the RAFT, that which was my safety, became the words that I drifted so aimlessly over. As one language merged with another so did our paths. Our journeys in time became the same, to seek refuge and to know one another. To know my actions were guided by faith no longer consoles me. I too, went in search of you and found nothing. Or, I too, went in search of you and found only my memory. I had been making my measurements harshly against infinity and now I wonder, was I too hard on myself and those around me? For it was instilled in me that I was on the right path but the rightness of that path was itself obscured to me like the stars were by the clouds. Another backdrop to what? To forgiveness, for in this act I absolve time and language. That I still suffer yet forgive. I felt your footsteps on my path, the path that would become my grave, the path that would become myself. To merge with your path, to lose yourself in the process of becoming that which can only be read by others. And yet your footsteps were to cross my heart and bleed me again into the infinite arms of God. And then to be cast out into that which I know now: 'Weeping without cease, I went in quest of you. Unknown I would forget everything...'.¹ 

Alexandra Pitsis is a writer living in Sydney.

RAFT signals the epitaph on Carl Strehlow's gravestone: 'by faith we perceive that the universe was fashioned by the word of God'. Strehlow (1871 - 1922) was pastor at the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg when he died tragically on the Finke River at Horseshoe Bend. Among the first to transcribe Aranda and Loritja poetry, song, myth and traditions, his work appeared in German as Die Aranda -- und Loritja -- Stamme in Zentral Australien, Vols 1 - 5, 1907 - 1920, Frankfurt am Maim. Strehlow also helped translate the Bible into the Aboriginal languages of Dieri and Aranda. 

RAFT commemorates the coexistence of two marginalised cultural groups -- one indigenous and one non-indigenous -- in Anglo-Saxon Australian culture. Paul Carter and Ruark Lewis, Art Gallery of New South Wales, April - May 1995. 

RAFT comprises: a 43 minute sound/voice archival and reflective composition in real time with environmental recordings from the Lira Beinta in Central Australia. A verandah-like or platform structure, 8.5m x 4.8m, inscribed with approximately 22,500 characters of the alphabet drawn in graphite pencil, takes up the majority of the floorspace. The text is taken from St Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, books 27 - 28, and appears in six languages: Greek; Vulgate Latin; High German; Dieri, English and Aranda. The entire work is framed by silk drapery, 20m x 5.5m.

Paul Carter lives in Melbourne and is a fellow at the Australian Centre. He has written extensively for radio, especially ABC FM's The Listening Room. His most recent books are The Sound In Between (1992), and Baroque Memories (1994).

Ruark Lewis is a Sydney based visual artist and writer closely involved in radio, audio arts and performance events. He was curator of Writers in Recital for the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1985 - 1990.