The
market today was amazing!!!! I walked all around it. People say
it's big. It is but you can easily move through it and I think I can map it. I have been staring at the Great Mosque in the
photographs I took from my first visit here. In person it is truly
gorgeous. I want to take out my camera but I resist. I spend most
of my time in the Ankara market (where I am
drawn to the outer space designs, fabrics for the Afro-future?!).
There is the market that sells fabric for trousers, the red
bead market, and the place where I filmed about a month ago which is
at an intersection, a crossroads which mysteriously has open, still
spaces, meaning there are many places to perform! This includes lots
of raised areas that are virtually empty. And even the street of the
Ankara market is quite clear until the late afternoon with little, if
any cars, so many possibilities. Performing in Lagos makes me think about
David Hammons selling snow in New York City. And commerce. There
are so many possibilities. Free services? The selling of what? And
then something ephemeral. The slowing down of actions which tends to
be noticed visually or just by virtue of the fact that stillness
interrupts the flow.
On
the way to catch my bus home an older woman pushes me out of the
road, saving both of us from a speeding police truck. Like all
movement in Lagos, this, too, feels strangely choreographed.
