The residue of an unspecified ritual and journeying to no end

I have the good fortune of a whole row to myself on the airplane. I slump, put my feet up, then indulge in lying flat out across the three seats. However this feels far from indulgent. I’m uncomfortable, and apprehensive.

Iberia rescheduled my flight to Dakar three times, each change eating away into November, before boldly forcing the flight three weeks forward. This left me one meagre day to move out of lodgings, prepare my suitcase and squeeze in as many goodbyes as I could physically and emotionally manage. Abruptly plucked from the breast of Mama Montserrat, and catapulted head first into my new life in Senegal, I’m uncertain what awaits me on the other side, I’m uncertain if I actually packed anything useful.

 

The visa official at Dakar airport reads my name aloud with slow suspicion ‘ruh-beh-cuh cus-worf’. I assure him its a good name no? He seems satisfied, agreeing with a casual nod and smile. Once granted entry, I’m free to have my luggage rescanned, my passport and papers rechecked, then pass through the main doors into the heat of the senegalese night.

A huge African cockroach runs to greet me, scuttling round and round my feet.

‘Welcome to Senegal’ a man chuckles.

Residence with WAAW, Saint Louis, Senegal, supported by Arts Council England

I’ve been taking a lot of time recently to dig deeper into the history of witchcraft accusations.

By looking at a wider span of time outside the great european witch hunt at earlier social movements and then to the impact of globalisation, I’ve discovered how the roots of capitalism shaped the denigration of the natural body, and choked out mysticism. Due to the capitalist necessity for labour, better yet, unpaid labour, I believe there are some interesting parallels to be found between European women and indigenous populations under colonial oppression. This could be something more convoluted and multifarious than Freud’s allusion to female sexuality as ‘a dark continent’.

So I think it’s time I look at my practice of liminal rituals and uncanny bodies, and explore these ideas on a background of postcolonisation. I believe it’s important to deepen my understanding of the tangled relationship between women’s role as ‘other’ to the male, and the colonised cultures role as ‘the other’ to ‘civilized’ society. I want to engage with my responsibilities in re-performing ‘primitivization’ as a way of challenging the terms of civilization that marks women as primitive, and question the use of the exotic body in portrayals of witchcraft and other supernatural entities.

The ideal way to address these concerns is to move my practice to a city marked visually and perceptively by postcolonialism, so I submitted an application to reside in Saint Louis, Senegal, at WAAW Centre for the Arts, believing their proven model of support for emerging artists would allow me to tackle my topic in an invigorating environment, and offer access to a supportive network of contacts.

I have had the good fortune of being accepted on their residence program for 2014, and I’m please to announce that Arts Council England will be supporting me through this project.

Soon I will be departing Spain, and travelling to Senegal to investigate the legacy of traditions that manifested due to colonisation, and how they have been adopted and appropriated in modern Saint Louis. Continuing to investigate supernatural entities as incarnations of a phobia of ‘otherness’, I will focus on narratives of a preternatural nature, learning from these modern adaptations new ways to express these ideas within my practice.

Needless to say, this is the most challenging project I have taken on, but dang I’m excited to get going.

 

Something strange happens to me on residencies. Whether it’s the new environment, or the new people, the desire comes. It surprises me every time. No, it’s not for me. Not my thing. But here I am again. Completely and utterly absorbed with painting.

 

The joy of the skirmish between colours is reawaken. The feeling of the brush of the paper. The lesson in patience, and the want to go bigger and bigger and bigger.

 

Something is a little different this time though. I’m painting observationally, compliments to the drawings and not the strange barrage of colours and patterns I’ve toyed with before.

 

With my film camera taking it’s final breath up on the mountain, and now out of commission, I’ve turn to oil and pigments to capture my environment.

 

I don’t want to over analysis it, qualify it, or concern myself with how this fit into the big picture. Perhaps in a world of academic texts and sculptural logistics, painting is simply my art therapy.

 

 

so I’ll see you in 26 hours. 3am. no exchange of number, and did I catch his name correctly?

Was I really thinking about climbing Magic Mountain, in the dead of night, with a someone I just met?

 

The sky flushed red that evening and, after a brief moment of hesitation (step forward, step back, do i have time to get my camera and get into position?? errrrr, go! try it!), I’d ran up the rocky incline to photograph the dead olive trees, their stark gnarled branches, twisted,  inflamed by the sunset; to capture their danse macabre.

 

I missed the best light, but my indecisive antics had caught the attention of a couple enjoying an evening drink in the adjacent garden. I was invited to join them ( an adopted policy of saying yes has had a very positive influence on my activities so far this year, so I agreed with no hesitation), and 5 hours hours later I could be found myself on the same bench as we talked and drank into the night.

 

Making blood sacrifices to the mosquitos, our conversation veered rapidly through talk of virgins, flaming swords, deception, and ending the evening on a promise to scale the Magic Mountain in the dead of night, and an intention to greet the sunrise at the top. Sure, we didn’t know anyone who had done it before, but it was the general consensus that it was a great idea.

 

Packing my bag the next evening, (water, sugar, water, map) I was half convinced this wasn’t actually going to happen, it was a gin soaked fantasy, does anyone really want to climb the mountain at night? But I wasn’t going to be the one to back out. And as it turns out, neither was he.

 

I saw this as a perfect opportunity to explore the mountain in a completely different way, knowing how an adventure like this could inform and inspire my practice, I was going to learn the secrets the mountain held at night.

Everything changed after nightfall; the stars shared little light with us, and without head lamps we were plunged into darkness. Bats caught in our lights flashed like spectres, fluttered overhead and unknown rusting  (not boar, this high up? birds perhaps, cabras?) as we sought out the small stone towers that indicated we were on the right route (are we following a path or just a dry river bed?)

The climb was tough, surreal, but without a doubt, wonderful.

As we reached the peak my 35mm camera made a tired whirring, in its final throws of life capturing the day break.