The curatorial selection for The Performance Arcade 2012 responded to the shipping container as a site of displacement: one that carries possessions, produce, contraband and refugees across oceans to new homelands. As a medium that connects us all, the sea was another recurrent element in the selected works: complementing the singular, rigid form of the container with a state of transience. These two qualities interacted in a series of performance spaces to create a portrait of a transgressive living, and a state of flux; expressing anxieties about the structures of commerce that the shipping container is such an important part of.