muddy market with sugarcane

Sunday at Bar Beach

my first bus ride by myself!

late night road food

"We will be seen and we will be heard" --Kelly Gabron

Wura Comfort Akinpalu Morakinyo Ogunji

I am working on a performance which is based on the relationship between my Nigerian grandparents, Gilbert and Wura. It was recently confirmed that my grandfather's family was Muslim, while my grandmother's was Christian. My grandfather converted to Christianity and became a pastor which led him to travel all over Nigeria--Kano, Kaduna, Zaria. The meta-narrative of this performance is about Muslim-Christian relationships set against the backdrop of current religious conflicts in this nation (of Nigeria). As I develop the piece, however, I am struck by the fact that in telling that particular story I am forgetting about what came before, what is so easy to forget: Islam and Christianity, two colonizing religions, did not always exist. There was a time when they didn't exist at all. Imagine that world.

I am thinking about the conditions that made it possible for my grandparents to meet, come together, marry, have children. Attraction, love, longing, politics, family?  Roads crossed.  While this lineage intersects with Islam and Christianity it goes back further. How do I account for what came before? I find myself obsessively looking for archival film footage of a time before moving pictures even existed, so I'll settle for anything right now which includes a smattering of anthropological films and newsreels with condescending overdubs.

The pinhole camera is the great ancestor to photography and film. I have long been entranced by the idea that our people long ago watched moving images. Why wouldn't they? Light entering between leaves in the forest, projecting the movement of clouds overhead; a hole in the wall of a shelter or home reflects the upsidedown dance of people walking and talking just outside.  

Chronicles of a Lying Spirit by Kelly Gabron (a film by Cauleen Smith)

I recall Cauleen Smith's 'Chronicles of a Dying Spirit'. This film is a brilliant portrait of a girl, no, an artist making herself, recalling history, speaking about the moving image, making film. The story changes, repeats, and leaves a stunning after effect. Wait, I think the title is actually 'Chronicles of a Lying Spirit'. I so strongly remember the words of this spirit, girl, woman, 'I decided I'll just have to make my own damn films.'  That is how I remember it.

I am working on a performance—a film?—about the history of my grandparents, about their love story, about the history of Nigeria, before it was even Nigeria, about the history of colonizing religions like Islam and Christianity, about what we believed before (and now), about our relationship to the land and each other, about the history of the universe, this universe, about the moving image before film.  

the point where you perceive that you are

(today's writing is from an email to a friend)

This place is amazing. It welcomes me in deep, perhaps unexpected ways.  It's a sense of belonging that I also feel in San Francisco but of course much deeper here, a longer connection though at the same time so recent.  I spent last weekend with my family--sister and brothers--and it was quite lovely.  I miss them today, the constant company and laughter is really quite amazing.  It's so interesting to feel like such a person of solitude and independence and at the same time like I feel much energy from being around other people.  It is a strange realization, to know my own solitude and ability to be alone and to feel longing of company.  I feel so lucky to be in this flat.  It is spacious and my room is sunny and we are around a courtyard (of sorts) so it feels totally peaceful to come home and do work when I need to, or when I feel I've had enough of these moving, breathing, muddy streets.

The ideas are pouring out of my head and heart and I am excited for what's to come.  People say that life is art here but I also believe that there is another place for art.  That art allows us to remove from the everyday (even when life and art are so connected).  Art is always something more, something just outside, on the edge.  I have gone dancing a few times and feel (surprisingly so) that this is where I must spend much of my time.  Dancing all night at a bachelor party (one of 3 women there) was the most incredible experience.  I would normally (in the US) feel so unsafe at a party with all men drinking, etc.  It was truly magical.  To feel completely free in my body and protected, taken care of, sexy, moving, awkward and at the same time absolutely perfect.  Such a gift.  I went with my housemate who is a fulbrighter.  She's a white jewish girl--not important except for the fact that i felt/realized it was not important...my u.s. race, racial, racist experiences and defenses come down in lovely ways.  How do we fully escape the experience of racism in order to be more fully human ourselves while also acknowledging what is real in the world?  My housemate requested a dancehall song from the dj in the midst of some fast moving music; there was a pause from the crowd packed into the garage, a brief silent moment at the party when the music unexpectedly changes, and then an almost audible sound of joy as we immediately shifted our moves to match the rhythm.  There is a generosity here that is unparalleled.  

Being mixed, of two cultures, races (so-called) I find myself moving between, around perspectives so much.  I met an artist last night from Abidjan.  She is doing an installation at the CCA and staying here for a few days.  We spoke in English and French.  My very broken French from high school emerged.  It's incredible what the body remembers.  It was kind of a spiritual experience for me talking with her.  She is also mixed (from Cote d'Ivoire and France) and we've had some similar, perhaps parallel realizations about life, energy, destiny, one's path in life.  She was talking about how in high school she realized life is made up of three points: the positive, the negative and the point where you perceive that you are.  And that perception can always change depending on the mind.  Ha! I had this feeling when we were speaking like, are we really here in the room together, or are we floating in space with this imagined architecture of table, chairs, floor, air coming off the fan, generator hum.  She said, Africa is the future of the world, everything is here.  She spoke about being black in France and white in Africa.  I know this word in French, 'Ironie'.   

I am making a list of performances I want to do in Lagos.  This includes:

Walking down the street on stilts

Running down the road blindfolded (from a Guillermo Gomez-Pena exercise)

Flying at the ocean

listen while reading

The rain here is incredible. I noticed the darkening sky and cool air just in time to pull my clothing from the line. I arrived in Lagos a week ago and it has been so, so lovely. This past weekend I saw Call me Kuchu as part of the Lights, Camera, Africa! Film festival. It's a documentary about the LGBTI movement, activists in Uganda. “Amazing and devastating” as Ernest Hardy describes. Powerful to see a film about queerness while in Lagos.

After the film there was a short discussion with filmmaker/writer/photographer Femi Odugbemi and Mahen Bonetti, Executive Director of NY's African Film Festival, about the state and future of African film. Bonetti talked about the 'fight for the image of Africa' which has me thinking about archives. Odugbemi described how during Nigeria's celebration of fifty years of independence in 2010 the same 5 minutes of BBC footage was shown (footage which had to be purchased at a great price from the BBC). We don't have these kind of film archives in Nigeria. I am thinking about the nature and necessity of archives. Books, photographs, audio is so critical to remembering and claiming place, not just place in the physical sense of home or nation-state, but one's place in the world. An archive shows us that we have a place in the world not delineated by identity; we have a place because we witness stories that expand our notion of who we are or may become in the world.

Bonetti mentioned the importance of the recently-discovered Russian film archives of 'Africa'. Apparently, the Scandinavians have 'African' archives too. I scoured the interwebs for this footage.  Alas, I believe she was referring to a film by Alexandr Markov called Our Africa: Thousands of Kilometres of Soviet Film. Despite the obvious failings of the paternalistic title, I look forward to seeing this work if/when it plays in Lagos.  The trailer looks beautiful.

I want a million stories about one place. So to add to this endeavor...

Last Friday, September 28, my new housemate moves (a Fulbrighter researching alternatives to the juvenile justice system in Lagos...Wow!). She invites me to a party after the film festival opening. Her three guy friends pick us up around eleven and we begin the dark, bumpy journey through the streets of Yaba (my new neighborhood!). Though initially cautious (people warn not to go out after dark) I am v excited for my first Lagosian party.  Oh la la!  The guys in the car are notably quiet and about twenty minutes into the journey we slow in front of a church. Is this what she meant by party?!

The car keeps moving and we continue down the road and eventually park. We get out and are led through a large, winding house, into and out of a kitchen--where Auntie's are cooking over huge pots of vegetables, meat and rice--then up several flights of stairs. I hear my roommate ask one of the guys, “So this is your brother's bachelor party?”

(wt%$&*?!)

Of course it was amazing. The party started on the roof where we could see an incredible lightning storm in the distance, and a full moon directly above us. At some point it began raining so we all rushed into the garage and I danced my booty off until past 5am. Then home, safe and sound, but not before I received the complement of a lifetime.

guy: Are you Yoruba?

me: Yes.

guy: I could tell by the way you dance.

And thus the bar, club, party, dance floor becomes an important site for this year's research and archive.

seas and skies of West Africa

Lagos! I love this place, it feels like home, like I am of it, in it. It is smokey and full—from when I step off the plane I can smell salt fish, palm oil and fires. And incessant horn honking accompanies all public movements. The crossing of streets is not to be taken for granted. As I left the Centre for Contemporary Art today, I stepped across the briefly empty street only to hear a shriek (mine?!) as the passenger on a motorcycle gently shoved my elbow away. (Please don't tell my Auntie.) It is amazing to see young school children navigate these roads. Lagos is a dance intensive of the highest order.  And so it begins...

Transatlantic

in the neighborhood of Cabo Verde

approaching West Africa

Senegal

Mali

Burkina Faso

Ghana

Togo

Benin

Approaching Lagos

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coming soon...

new performance work

coming to you live from Cidade de São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos

Yesterday we made a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in Bahia. Time travel slowly. View from the catacombs, which is also the education room(!). Used to be a slave port. And a sugar mill. Didn't feel ghosts strangely enough. The museum is majestic, several galleries, wide open spaces.




Blue and white tile work covers the walls leading to the main gallery. Where is the place of history and remembrance in all of this? I thought of the artist Adriana Varejão whose work brilliantly displays the history of colonization within the beauty of the ceramic work. Her work should live here.

by Adriana Varejão

There is also a restaurant below. Caipirinhas on the patio? The irony does not escape me.



The tracks from the ingenio (sugar mill) below my feet.

PROGRAM NOTES: GLOSSOLALIA 5.0 @ The Kitchen

from Cauleen Smith's PROGRAM NOTES: GLOSSOLALIA 5.0 @ The Kitchen

SEE full program notes here.

My Father and I Dance In Outer Space (2011)

First Encounter: Sixteen years ago in West Oakland On the set of Drylongso. Subsequent Viewing Pattern: I am compelled to screen an Ogunji video every seven months or so.

With My Father and I Dance In Outer Space, Wura-Natasha Ogunji has deepened and refined her endurance performance videos by stripping away everything that we don’t need, and providing us with everything we do need to feel unstable, uncertain, enthralled, and undone. The spirit dancer presents herself, and then proceeds to make a barren landscape with her footprints, moisten it with her sweat and breath. Based on my experience with the Malibu State Park Rangers, the intensity of the Ogunji Spirit’s sustained levitations will certainly aerate that yellow soil. If we return to this site in one month’s time, the Ogunji Figure may not be there, but I am certain, that scented chaparral shrubs, and desert cacti will. Rather than frame and validate the video’s signifiers enjoying direct linkage to Yoruban ritual and Ogunji’s heritage, the artist opens the video to grander possibilities and indeed extends her speculations beyond terrestrial identity into the speculative realm of the cosmological. The discomfort we feel as we sympathetically ache with the strain of Ogunji’s gorgeously choreographed performance is diminished by her application of distance and time. The figure’s placement in the landscape tells us one ting about this gesture while the sky above her tells us another all together. Long Memory. Clouds sweep over Ogunji faster than we can comprehend just as my Malibu clouds confounded my aperture many times over the course of an afternoon of building an inverted maypole and tearing it apart. The Ogunji Spirit is a regenerative force that finally stops because the work is done, not because its powers are exhausted. Just as I was happy to have Wura on my set building the delicate readymades that grace the finale of Drylongso, I am happy to have her videos with me now: Ogunji’s work never fails celebrate and test the confounding tension between the quotidian and the magical.

stills from new performance 'sweep'

i will marry when i want

my first animation inspired by a day at the market, being an outsider and insider, a stranger and family, being an artist. title after the play of the same name by Ngugi wa Thiong'o & Ngugi wa Mirii

first rain in Abuja

Finally language comes....rough inspiration from Kimberli Gant's review in Art Lies of my recent exhibition at WATW. She writes, "Though Ogunji’s interweaving of ancestry and spiritualism is understated and effective, her art-historical appropriation could use some strengthening." True dat. This helped answer a question, or look at a question I've been asking myself since landing here in Abuja. Thinking about the Atlantic's place in my cosmology. Wondering how my metaphors will change, what shifts will happen in my imagination, in the world of my creativity.

What drew me to the Ife heads has something and nothing to do with art history. The power of artifacts, objects, (even people!) encased in museums has always been palpable and it is so ironic that we must come to know ourselves through artifacts. Can we? What draws me to the Ife heads is the sense of individuality in the people, not how these heads are evidence of a great civilization. That question doesn't interest me--if we are or are not, were or weren't great (that was never our question). I am interested in how these faces are portraits of individuals who navigated the world with all the vulnerabilities that I have, with all that makes us human. What is it that I want to know or need to know? That they loved as I do and had doubts and touched the earth and felt the sun against faces and couldn't get enough of the smell of rain against the dusty red roads.

The smallest gestures are so important, that is what I have been looking for, not the epic but the quiet, unseen, embodied. I realized there was nothing massive in what I longed for. A smell. Or sound.

The airport is a subtle combination of palm oil and dried fish I think. It smells like the African stores in the U.S. Familiar and specific. And emerging from the airport reminded me so much of the Dominican Republic, that sweet and smokey smell of burning trash but unending because of the Harmattan. I walked so certainly out of the baggage claim to find my cousin and waiting for her I felt so comfortable after having navigated the Santo Domingo airport so many times.

Though landing here felt strangely common, as if it had happened so many times before. It moved me, but in a slow way. My cousins love me as if they have always known me. Though people in the street call me oyinbo (white person in Yoruba; oyibo in Igbo) wherever I go, I don't feel like an outsider to this place, or even a stranger.

My cousin tells me on a daily basis how much I look like my father. And all my relatives have gaps in their teeth (i used to have one too).

I am enjoying a lovely moment of quiet as I write this, a moment without the sound of generators.

I think about something Stephen Hawking said when asked to name his hero. He said Galileo because he taught us the power of observation. It is a beautiful gift to always be able to observe, to compose with our eyes, to observe our own gestures and responses, to be present to our mistakes and awkwardness as well as voice, difference, commonalities. I love that all this is new and familiar.

Lights off again. That quiet is short-lived.

KUT's Portrait of an Artist: Wura-Natasha Ogunji by Rebecca McInroy

Incidents at the 22 Hotel: August 13, 14!

Date: Friday, August 13, 8pm and Saturday, August 14, 8pm

Location: The Off Center, 2211-A Hidalgo Street, Austin, near 6th and Robert Martinez

Tickets: $15.

For tickets or to read more go to the blog.

Incidents at the 22 Hotel takes a post-apocalyptic landscape and imagines what it is to be part of that future. The main character, called ‘Unexplained Presence’ struggles to imagine her own existence. During the performance, she lives two lives, one as an African artifact, full of ancient power, yet motionless. In the other, she must choose to be human and imagine herself into the future. The Porter, a trickster-like character, wears a fantastical mask which also doubles as the hotel itself and accompanies Unexplained Presence on her journey. The Runners keep track of time as they literally run for as long as this futuristic world exists.

one hundred black women, one hundred actions this Friday, April 24th, 8pm

WHAT: one hundred black women, one hundred actions:
a powerful visual, physical, and artistic language created by black women from around the world

WHEN: Saturday, April 24 at 8 p.m. (Central Time)

WHERE: East 6th Street between San Marcos and Medina

Watch Live Projection: Sweethome Baptist Church 1725 West 11th Street, Clarksville

Watch Live Online: www.ustream.tv/channel/onehundredblackwomen

COST: FREE

www.100blackwomen100actions.com

Soundings, Seams and Visual Sonics

Soundings is born from my deep amazement at how we walk in this world. Maferefún Ana-Maurine Lara, Samiya Bashir, Leigh Gaymon-Jones, Kiyana Horton, Amanda Johnston and Senalka McDonald for the beautiful beginnings.

In a few weeks I travel to Miami to do the third performance of Soundings. It’s a public visual performance installation that speaks about memory, history and power as located in the black female body. I have visioned the piece to happen in multiple locations: Brazil, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nigeria, the United States and on a ship crossing the Atlantic (yes, breathe.....). I am forever in search of the threads, connections and in creating physical evidence of our existence, our power, the movements of our bodies in the world, the mark, the vévé. The performances are all videotaped—the camera is another witness. Eventually the geographies will meet as multi-channel videos that reveal the complete visual sonics: fathoms, seams, syncopation (mother of dissonance?).

I began this project almost two years ago and thought it might quietly disappear as I have felt unsure about the language I am looking for—how do we access collective deep knowledge and then make that physical? I return to the performers to understand the piece. Sometimes we need other people to remember for us. Carole tells me that the work is about connecting that space of erasure between Africa and the Americas. She says, “I’m the summation of what came before me so that I can be here today.” And how to visualize that summation?

What does it look like when you know ‘You are’?

Another performer reminds me that the seams are important.
How to include these?

Performers are asked to 'describe the color of your deepest power'. I create 'fathoms' of these colors.

Following you here...

Ife Head Lands (still from performance video)

It has been a day of starts and stops. And so I am looking for the connections, the lines and the drawings these lines might possibly become. Yoruba creation myths talk about how we choose our journeys in life, all important events like our own births and deaths, and parents and other major markers and then we must touch the tree of forgetfulness just before we are born. We walk this journey to prove that we have chosen a good path in life. Elegua indeed. There must be a drawing in here somewhere.

I made a new performance video ‘Ife Head Lands’ and burned two copies of the dvd. Two. Today I realize that there may only be two copies in existence forever as I seem to have lost the files into the netherworld of my computer. Is it possible to reconstruct the film in exactly the same way again? It will be an almost-identical twin the second time around. Or maybe not a twin at all. These themes in the work take on a life of their own. A face painted to look like an Ife Head is a way to understand the artifact and the person that came before. And then I suppose the artifact has something to say. I found and it found me. This dance choreographs itself into my body and onto the landscape of paper that surrounds me. Sometimes I want to give away all these creations so that I can start fresh, clean, clear.

But it’s impossible. They always find you. I prayed at the ocean in Miami this spring, thinking I am not ready for all these stories that wake me at 5, 4, 3am. The message was something I should have known already, ‘be thankful for the stories that come to you.’ This breath is a responsibility, this body. The air can pull you to your knees, make you change directions open doors close doors open doors.

Astrologer Anne Ortelee says we are in a time of double negatives. So the unexpected two doors closing is actually an opening. But breathe first. And we are supposed to be writing down our dreams for insight. Last night I remember dreaming about an email that said: Following you here has been becoming. Is it a clue? Or not not a clue? From the same friend who told me ‘I love being around black people’ one evening in Jamaica. I hear that in my core, knowing I have felt that before on the island of Santo Domingo, that specific sensation of my own weight in the world, past and future. It is something that the land absorbs, that is etched so that our very existence resounds, booms. And the sound is deep house. I have never had that, heard that here in the same all-encompassing way. It is deep knowledge.

Like Tisa Bryant’s Autodidact: “Self-knowledge is a disavowal of contested spaces, elbowing a way in. Back door! Disremembering, unremembering as a reasonable response to trauma: either I don’t remember feeling anything about not seeing myself in every book I opened, or I just realize I wasn’t (supposed to be) there. But we look at each other, and know, you and we, are here, and here, and here.”

Following you here has been becoming. As in the drawing has been happening for a long time now? As in when you find it, it will have been waiting for you? They found you here? They did not not find you here. Yes, we looked at each other.

You, me, twin dvds, Ife Heads, what I found when they found me. The body is the axis, mine, yours, not not ours, the weight of it, the drawing of it, the becoming and the sound of doors open doors close doors open.

Jump at 3am

Jump (detail)

Annelize Machado and Surabhi Kukke as Ife Heads
in the workshop performance of Incidents at the Two Two Hotel
at Co-Lab, Austin, TX. 2009


The beginnings in the Co-Lab studio

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