Peru

On June 29, 1988, an enormous totora reed raft set sail from the coast of Peru. It was an unprecedented sea expedition; its aim was none other than connecting South America and Polynesia. It was built on a beach south of Lima, where dozens of volunteers worked for weeks under the guidance of eight Aimara craftsmen, beneath and upon an enormous scaffolding that supported the vessel, and made possible its assembly.
These craftsmen built the raft resorting to age-old lore and their mastery of the totora reed, an organic material essential to their cultural development. In the process, they brought the collective intelligence applied to other floating objects belonging to a shared built heritage, such as the Uros floating islands on Lake Titicaca. Both the raft and the islands require auxiliary structures which, albeit temporary, are essential. This duality between the ephemeral and the permanent inspires the conversation we wish to spark regarding collective ingenuity and the dynamic nature of the relationship between materials, time and memory.