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© Anna Jane McIntyre, Photographed by Alignements.
Exhibition text
The Origin and its Sum
by Victoria Platel
Feeling lucky? Anna Jane McIntyre invites us to participate in a carnival where the present and the familiar are found in a new context. The bossal is a pawn in a board game where moves are determined by a wheel of fortune or a roll of dice. McIntyre demonstrates that every action in the present is a future realized. She embodies the character of the jester to challenge the suspicious gaze cast on the bossal. "I'm black," McIntyre declares in letters written in tar with a paintbrush. It is a phrase that articulates both the obvious and what is about to be revealed.
In Emphasize, Ngemba and two other performers draw the line between here and elsewhere, and between yesterday and today. The black body: how and to what extent has it become a problem? It is a question that seeks to decipher the enigma of bossal identities. Ngemba's work is a series of videos projected on three beings weaving a double consciousness that resists binary identity constructions. The videos tell a non-exhaustive chronology of a body treated as property, an anthropological discovery and a hypersexualized object. On the other hand, there are clips that bring to life some of the key events in Afro-descendant histories that are, despite their singularities, contemporary and transnational. Here, the body defines itself as much as it undergoes.
dana michel, on the other hand, makes us live through a capitalist nightmare in SOME ARBITRARY SAFE. michel goes outside the space with a desk and, undecided, we see her change position several times through the window. Finally, she settles inside near her makeshift shelter (a tent) to which she is attached at the arm. A complex parody of the workplace is enacted. For example, a volleyball becomes an ergonomic office chair and vibrator. She places a keyboard, lamp and mouse on the desk and adjusts a headset on her head. This image recalls the work from home set up; a respite and a trap that blurs the line between personal life and work. We transition to an all-too-familiar pandemic ritual: keyboard and mouse are stubbornly disinfected with mouthwash. We live through this nine-to-five hell having confronted our alienating work habits.
The practical concerns that connection demands can be incongruous, tongue-twisting, shifting perceptions of interpreted freedoms, assumed responsibilities and rough-shod stereotypes. Rolling through an altered alphabet and abecedarium of mixed-up-foggy-feelings-and-memories. I am I. You are You. We. Visual vistas, What ifs, Remember whens. A voiceless bodyfull performance with colour and sound. We play games. We dress up. Many lingos hint at slivers of sense. The dice is rolled, steps are taken and consequences revealed. Come as you are or don't come at all. For sure, there will be too many props and costume changes. Possible participation.