Point of Departure
An installation and performance piece which explores the themes of transience and movement, geography and identity, belongings and belonging and combines visual art with sound, text and movement.
A suitcase is a simple yet evocative object – provoking a multitude of thoughts and feelings within us – many contradictory – from feelings of freedom and yearning to feelings of instability and panic, from the exhilaration of the open road to the fear of leaving it all behind…and every suitcase would have a story to tell – of its contents, its owners and of its journeys. This work looks at these themes using the suitcase as the repository of peoples’ lives and their stories.
black white black white stripe black stripe white stripe now you see me now you don’t across the zebra crossing herds of zebra crossing cantering across the veldt each baby recognizes its mother by her stripes how do they manage that? they all look the same to me they all look the same those animals, how do they manage that? they all look the same those people, how do you tell them apart keep them apart white stripes on black backs white stripes on black tar roads black white black white zebra stripe cricket whites
bat against the cricket all blacks black balling white strike out black white black white now you see me now you don’t across the black stripe white stripe zebra crossing can you see me can you see me zebra crossing black stripes white stripes you bleached your black hair white black quills with white points black hair with bright bleached tips sticking up like porcupine points of light in the South African sun, porcupine quills of black hair white hair black white porcupine quills black and white sharp points in the South African sun
standing in a jar on the square of cloth he laid out with the rest of his collection of healing remedies and tinctures, snake skins, monkey skulls, pieces of goat hide, bucks hoof, alligator tail, lions teeth, skunk skin black skin white skin black white black white all the way all the way up the spine the porcupine no two the same no two alike porcupine sharpness quills tipped with a remedy puncture the skin apply the medicine no two the same now you see me now you don’t can you see me can you see me
Suitcases reveal scenarios and stories of travellers, refugees and immigrants….
…people who have moved whether by choice or by force of circumstances, a visual and aural collage of a world of transition, full of shifts and changes, mobility and movement, arrivals and departures.
