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Copy of MATEA ŠABIĆ SABLJIĆ BRODI-ONA_058_edited.jpg

brodi/ona

"i carry a boat over a montain"
performative action
Sea Silba Environment Art
04.08.2022.

 

PERFORMATIVE ACTION 04.08.2022

Launching of the sixth boat “Rachael Parsons” Godmother: Marica Njegovan Island of Silba, organized by SEA Silba Environment Art, Silba Tourist Board, and Sports Fishing Society Galeb

 

We invited women of Silba and guests to take part in the performance “I Carry a Boat Over the Hill” in order to stage a poetic image inspired by Werner Herzog’s quote: “Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.”

Thirty‑six women dressed in the non‑color black gathered, and with our hands we carried six boats across the island, from the Western to the Eastern harbor – “I Carry a Boat Over the Hill” – “at the dawn of new mornings of historical and future heroines”, so that we could name and launch the sixth boat in honor of Rachael Parsons, founder of the Women’s Engineering Society in England (1919–21).

Above the streets, every hundred meters or so, there were power cables or tree branches stretched across, and the fleet of

boats equipped with masts and sails (locals said it “looked like an epic, like a procession of boats”) had to be carefully navigated so that the masts could pass beneath the cables. Thus, leadership was taken by officer and godmother Marica Njegovan, who back in the 1970s sailed on Jadrolinija ships as a second officer and equal crew member, thereby becoming the first woman on Jadrolinija’s ships. Godmother Marica named the boat “Rachael Parsons” after the English engineer and advocate for women’s employment rights, one of the first three women at Cambridge University to study mechanical sciences, a leading member of the National Council of Women who fought for equal access to technical schools and faculties for all, founder and first president of the Women’s Engineering Society which promoted the retention of women engineers after World War I, supporting engineering as a career for women, and one of the first three women admitted to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. The boat was sailed by multimedia artist Nives Sertić. Afterwards, the entire fleet BRODI/ONA, all six boats, set sail.

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