Dawning New Narratives / Coldest Before the Dawn [Bring Back the Sun]
Dawning New Narratives / Coldest Before the Dawn [Bring Back the Sun] Video performance At dawn on the Winter Solstice this year, I sat and tore a continuous thread from the volumes C, J and R of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I did this for an hour and a half, at the Rhodes Memorial in Cape Town, making a complete seated revolution. It was a cold 5° C. The original intention was to perform the same action on the plinth which supported the removed Statue of Rhodes at UCT, the site of student #rhodesmustfall protests. Due to security issues the performance was not allowed. Rhodes Memorial instead afforded a splendid view of the dawn, the city and provided a site which declares colonial conquer. The encyclopaedia Britannica in its obsolete printed form, embodies an effective form of colonisation; the propagation of English language and its specific cultural/political systems of knowledge acquisition, development and classification. Making yarn from the books becomes an absu...
