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 absurdist-ironic ‘spinning yarns’ action. The action extracts ‘narratives’ that were not written, stories that were not classified, and things that couldn’t be categorised. The performance finds threads of that which could not be pronounced in English, by English.

The full rotation of sitting speaks of the commitment required to sit with an uncomfortable past. It also underpins the dedication to decolonising as a way of being rather than ideology. It makes useful of the obsolete by repurposing and finding new purpose, holding the baby whilst flushing the bath water.

  

Dawning New Narratives

Installation / Sculpture

The sculpture uses a full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica as material; both as actual matter and content. These volumes propagated English language; its specific cultural/political systems of knowledge acquisition, development and classification. They also stand as a demonstration of something obsolete; printed knowledge and colonisation. As an installation the pile of books are both the pedestal and the material for the sculpture; a ball of yarn.

The ball of yarn becomes an ironic absurdist play on spinning yarns; telling stories, making narratives. The yarn is a product from a performance ‘Dawning New Narratives / Coldest before the Dawn’: 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.

The yarn references a preindustrial time. A time before the mass dissemination of English, facilitated by printing. A time when yarn was spun by hand. The yarn becomes the narratives that were not written, stories that were not classified, and things that couldn’t be categorised. It is the thread of that which could not be pronounced in English, by English.

This preindustrial reference also picks up a ‘Luddite’ reaction to change. The horror of tearing up something that held so much meaning and value. This points to the tension of ‘The New’ chaffing against that which no longer serves or is no longer useful.