The history book for those who absolutely need to be remembered (2015 and ongoing).
Since 2015, I have embarked on a series of site-specific performative interventions that constitute a history book for those who absolutely need to be remembered. Through this work, I use performance as an expanded form of archiving or writing histories, with a particular focus on the stories of the marginalized or forgotten.
In order to write the history of each site, conversations, archival material, artefacts, and literary material are combined with personal memories and performed as a chapter of the book. By recomposing archival research as living, breathing bodies, writing-as-a-ritual transforms how the history of a place is constructed and, therefore, narrated. The linearity and objectivity with which history has “always” been presented is interrupted while the resulting story is both subjective and collective.
Collectively, these interventions are to be considered as time-based texts that specifically address history in their own form and on their own terms. Because the book’s chapters are written through performance, their physical form is ephemeral. The political implications of writing in-time, and with-time allows a temporality, disturbs certainty, and presents a series of shared scenarios of endurance through time, with each chapter having the potential to produce new non-linear texts, objects, and sounds whose “spirit” can potentially travel or remain on-site.
Existing book-chapters:
Chapter I: How, in solidarity, our lands wished they could spit out all the salt residue (from the oceans, rivers, and seas). (Turistarama, Cologne, 2023)
Chapter G: It was in the stillness of those graveyards that we heard the loudness of our erasure (KHM Aula, Cologne, 2023)
Chapter M: The wind still breathes in the rhythm of our mother’s mothers´ whispers (Ilsede, Germany, 2023)
Chapter J: For those of us who speak Wind (Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 2022)
Chapter V: Even when we are all no longer visible, I will continue to breathe for us (Volt, Bergen, 2022)
Chapter O: ...,_., (The Power Plant, Toronto, 2022)
Chapter T: The loudest absence has a language too. (Haus der Kulturen de Welt, Berlin, 2021)
Chapter R: When the trees, oceans, and lands recovered the forgotten spells from her blood. (Coculture, Berlin, 2021)
Chapter S: Memories that were Hugged by Watta (Les Abbattoirs Museum, Toulouse, 2021)
Chapter N: Chapter N: Every Grain and Bone has a Name Too ... (Changing Room, Berlin, 2021)
Chapter E: Yesterday, the cries of our mirror-reflections sang-songs (online, 2020)
Chapter H: When Hundreds times Thousands met Multiples, add More (online, 2020)
Chapter Z: When Everything and Everyone Returned (Stellenbosch,
South Africa, 2020)
Chapter D: When our doors got up and left (Belgrade City Museum, 2018)
Chapter Q: Dem Short-Short-Falls (Bijlmerramp Monument, Amsterdam, 2017-2018)
Introduction Here...WE THE PEOPLE! (various towns and cities, South Africa, 2017-ongoing)
Chapter P: The-Not-Not-Educational-Spirits (E.O.T.O. Library, Berlin, 2017)
Chapter U: Me, looking at You, Looking at Me, Looking at You
(PAC Museum, Milan, 2017)
Chapter Y: Is Survival Not Archival? (South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 2017)
Chapter L: When Rain Clouds Gathered... (Cape Town Art Fair Talks, Cape Town, 2017)
Chapter X: A mouthful of Hot Air (When we re-blackened our faces and turned) (New Gate, Palestine, 2016)
Chapter F: The Free School for Art and all ‘Fings Necessary (Until Fees Fall) (Various sites, Johannesburg, 2016-ongoing)
Chapter B: I, Too (SP Biennale Pavilion, Sao Paulo, 2016)
Chapter A: The Anatomy of History (Museo Afro Brazil, Sao Paulo, 2016)
Chapter C: The Genealogy of Pain (Cemitério da Consolação, Sao Paulo, 2016)
TO BE ANNOUNCED... (Nothing Gets Organised, Johannesburg, 2016)
TO BE ANNOUNCED (nGbK, Berlin, 2015)
**The letters "M", "W", and "K" are still remaining.**