What is SEA-CRAFT?



It is a D.I.Y digital archive project for Gold Coast art.



Departure date: June 2024
Return date: March 2025
Type of vessel: Digital

Skipper: Kimberly Stokes
Cartographer:  Landen Callander
No. of passengers: 8






The simple text version:



The Sea-craft project is a website where stories about the Gold Coast arts community are collected. This project takes the shape of a website and a digital mind map, which will be updated randomly over time. The aim is for the project to be about experimentation and care. The name sea-craft came from the object sea-craft, which is a vehicle used for travelling on water. 

Kimberly Stokes (she/her) is an artist who lives and works on the Gold Coast, and she is managing this project. Landen Callander (he/they) will be creating a map of symbols to categorise the content uploaded to the website. 

Kimberly will have conversations with eight people over six months (August 2024 - March 2025). These people might be artists, writers, researchers, archivists, industry professionals, art collectors or gallery directors, who are in some way connected to the Gold Coast art scene.

The project acknowledges that there are many different ways we as humans collect and tell stories. These processes can sometimes be abstract, speculative and symbolic. The digital mind map is used to highlight how memory can be loose and messy. The website will include writing, images, videos, voice memos and url links to other websites. 

The project’s title ‘sea-craft’ is also a humorous phrase that has more than one meaning. The word ‘sea’ represents the Gold Coast and it’s recent history as a beach-side city and tourist destination. The word ‘craft’ symbolises the basic and uncomplicated methods that are used in this project, such as using an iPhone to record audio, instead of a high-quality microphone.




The poetic version:



SEA-CRAFT is a living digital archive project. It is capturing the collective histories of the Gold Coast arts community.

SEA-CRAFT is an experimentation. It is a digital mind map that grows. It is about looking and listening and collecting and categorising.

In another way, a SEA-CRAFT is also a vehicle for travelling on water.

Our SEA-CRAFT's skipper is Kimberly Stokes (she/her). She is an artistwho lives and works on the Gold Coast.

Our SEA-CRAFT has an infinite map with no lines of latitude or longitude. Landen Callander (he/they) is our cartographer. He's on board, placing new coordinates as we travel.

Our SEA-CRAFT will drop anchor at eight ports, and we have enough supplies to last us 304 days.

SEA-CRAFT's can drift, float and hover. They can zoom through portals. They linger over stories, memories and worries. They glide between images, symbols, colour and voicememos. They remember and recall.

SEA-craft’s are obsessed with *ocean obsessed* cities. And CRAFT is our approach: using yourhands, using what you've got, seeing all that is around you. It is doing-it-yourself , doing-it-together, questioning, remembering, re-tracing your steps, scavenging beach-combing. It's about the re prefix: back or again. It is looking back and looking again.




This SEA-CRAFT will traverse through the stories and spaces of the Gold Coast. I acknowledge the Kombumerri families of the Yugambeh language region as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land, and pay respect to Indigenous Elders past and present. Sovereignty has never been ceded.  
It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.


 SEA-CRAFT has received funding from the Regional Arts Development Fund. The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and the City of Gold Coast Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.