With continuing debates in the media about “the refugee problem” my thoughts keep returning to nameless individuals suspended at the periphery of our shores, to families huddled on ship decks, and to children jailed in our infamous centres of detention, where tragedies are growing ever more septic.

I increasingly draw parallels with my father’s childhood wartime internment in Java and the subsequent crossing of many seas to safety. The atrocities endured he willed into an impenetrable lifelong silence.

Through the installations and performances of the transpose project, I contemplate the dangers and pain of migration and relocation, of oscillating between hemispheres and associated colonially induced dichotomous relationships, and of never fully departing one place or of arriving at another.

The 397 suitcases are a symbolic reminder of the number of asylum seekers on board the boat nicknamed Siev X (suspected illegal entry vessel #10). This perilously overloaded boat sank in October 2001, while en route from Indonesia to Christmas Island. Only 44 survived. How many of the dead were children and from whom were their parents fleeing? I wonder how many people around the world set forth on this kind of desperate journey every year and how many eventually find what they'd hoped for?

At times throughout my life, war has occupied my thoughts to a great extent. I worry about the psychological cost to those who survive the current killing arenas and about those who continue to struggle with wars officially long declared over, but who on a daily basis cannot free themselves from the atrocities they managed to survive, or from the memory of those who could not survive. I know that the traumas of internment, hunger, terror, and relocation can take several generations to heal. If you survive perilous undercover journeys, internment, or what is referred to as detention, what does it really mean to ‘start over from scratch? I believe we must never become complacent about human rights and the oppressive powers of economic walls. Every day I remind myself of how lucky I am.

It’s uncanny how I locate books written by researchers and survivors of internment camps. I don’t look for them, but it just happens. The World of My Past by Abraham H. Biderman, Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard, Fragments by Binjamin Wilomirski, Borderline by Peter Mares, Broken Circles by Anna Haebich, Women Beyond the Wire: A Story of Prisoners of the Japanese 1942-45 by Lavinia Warner and John Sandilands. The small book A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn I discovered on a bookshelf at home when I was nine, re-emerges as well. As a child I couldn't let go of that book for a long time. I still can't understand the cruelty people impart so readily.

Recently, Hana’s Suitcase written by Karen Levine and researched by Fumiko Ishioka, a curator from a small Holocaust education centre in Tokyo, arrived in the post from Canada. Hana Brady, from Austria, was killed at Auschwitz, age eleven. The Nazis kept her suitcase along with thousands of others. Through many twists and turns, her suitcase inspired this biography more than fifty years later and Ishioka’s determination to teach Japanese children about the Holocaust.
My mother also sent Het Verbluffende Kamp: Herrinneringen aan het vrouwenwerkkamp Kampong Makassar West Java by Ko Luijckx. My grandmother’s scribbled red notes in the margins identify many of the individuals in the few photographs, including herself. There are none of her children, but she refers to one photo of an emaciated child that this boy could have been Erik (my father) because he looked exactly like this. I am moved to tears by women trying to look composed in dresses far too large for them and by endless stacks of suitcases. The pages describe what my father was never able recount. Later, after his death, my mother and I sit, night after night, taking turns reading out loud in Dutch.

I collect suitcases from sources across the city. I visit almost all the op shops, chat with curious volunteers and absorb their stories that often touch upon war. I salvage abandoned suitcases from parking lot dumpsters and do the drive-by-night verge collection. Those, who, like me, come from other places, sense my unrest and donate suitcases. Some op shop owners congratulate me with my forthcoming holiday I don’t even know about. Others assume I am fleeing a bad relationship and give me the suitcases for free.

With much bumping and scraping, each haul is lugged up the long stairs to my studio near Fremantle harbour. The mighty US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is nearby and another warship is docked just over there.

In the confines of the studio I am repulsed yet intrigued by the overwhelming sweet stink of perfumes, mouldy leather, and lingering body odours. I leave thick layers of dust intact and gently finger oily dirt encrusted handles and frayed straps. Some of the suitcases are forever locked. Others are split at the seams. In the dark recesses I find lost keys, foreign coins and a watch. There are photographs, fragments of letters, Christmas decorations, a baby's sock, a valentine's card to a wife, a screwdriver, an audio tape and curtains. I leave them.

A few months ago I packed together 200 empty, splayed open, suitcases on the floor of an old warehouse. I’m told that an older woman walked around the field of barren suitcases and became distraught. A stranger consoled her. The woman confided that the empty suitcases were distressing, but that they were also an inspiration for her to share her experiences with her son. She later returned with him.