And we’ve been making some art…
The past three weeks have seen us teeter on the edge of endless hills of research and plunge dramatically into the raging sea of production.
Something strange happens when you’ve been developing ideas for a long time and then get to the point of making artwork. It’s like you have to forget everything, and start afresh with a different part of your mind. And you just have to trust that somehow parts of all that thinking and research will emerge through what you make. We’ve been gradually generating works throughout our time on the ship, and in Cape Town, but the intensity has increased of late. Recent weeks have involved hectic missions made all the more challenging by the extreme heat.
We spent 24 hours at Burgerspan making a film, camping overnight to make the most of the low orange early morning light and the coolest part of the day. Being there at night was incredible, we made a fire and watched the moon over the gleaming salt pan and it felt like another world. Shooting the film was a surreal experience; we set up the dinner table in the middle of the salt pan and made our offerings to the ancestors. We wore beautiful 1930s dresses, and it was silent apart from the sound of silk in the wind. We shot it on an old 16mm camera but a few days later, we discovered that the film didn’t come out. We have a digital back up that we’re using instead, but it doesn’t quite live up to our vision. There’s a lesson in there somewhere – either about making things in a hurry, or perhaps that ghosts just can’t be filmed.
We’ve been hunting markets and strange little shops for random objects, printing photos, arranging salt deliveries, designing images. I’ve made a handcart, with the help of the remarkable Doug, to conduct salt experiments. At the weekend I went for one final trip to the pans and tested out harvesting and preservation techniques with the cart.
And now, with three days to go before our show at Stellenbosch opens, we are taking stock of what we’ve generated. We could have easily spent the full three months researching and testing ideas, and now we have to draw a line and make some choices about what to show. It’s exciting to push ourselves to create something public, to distill our thinking, and to open up our work for conversation.
