Tankwa Reflex

Tankwa Reflex - Performance piece and art installation at AfrikaBurn 2012



photo: Gary van Wyk

photo: Conrad Lattimer

 

photo: Henry Fagan

 Here is a selection of poems that formed part of my performance piece "Tankwa Reflex" I performed at AfrikaBurn this year. I printed and laminated over 40 different poems to drift on water being contained in 30 green enamel bowls. Granny Smith apples were placed in a star-shape around the bowls. The piece served as an installation art work, as well as a setting for the performance poetry piece I presented on the Friday and Saturday of the festival. 
I really enjoyed the way the piece was received. I do not like to impose a definite interpretation on the piece. When people came up to me and asked "does the star-shape signify anything?" or "what do the apples mean?" or "why all this water?" then I would answer "what does it all mean to YOU?" Sometimes an art work need not be explained, but simply experienced. There was so much poetry within this specific piece - the glistening light falling on the water and the mirror-mosaic, the colour and taste of the apples, the wonderment and curiosity on the viewers' faces. "Tankwa Reflex" is simply an open-ended reflective interaction with art and performance. Within the piece there were definite ingredients giving it a shape and feel, yet what the piece stood for was as varied as the people who experienced the piece.

I should add that the incredible rain and flash hail-storm that broke through the skies on the day before the first performance made me experience the piece and the poetry in a different light. The Tankwa Karoo, where the festival is hosted each year, is known for its desert climate. If you want water there, you have to bring it yourself. No taps, no rivers. Thus, for the first time in the fest's 6-year history the rain and hail did come as a surprise and a challenge to many. Some of the art works and theme camps were "re-shaped" and "re-distributed" by the winds and rain, yet the festival-goers and artists retained their sense of humour and AfrikaBurn spirit and most of us rose to the occasion and came out the better.

A special thank you to Andreas and Chantell who made the mirror mosaic.
A big thank you to the apple seller in Paarl who gifted me the 700 apples and a hearty thank you to all the photographers who shared their photographs so generously with me.

photo: Tim Honey

Entrance of the Waters

Beloved of the rivers, beset

By green growth and transparent drops,

Like a tree of veins your spectre

Of dark goddess biting apples:

And then awakening naked

To be tattoed by the rivers,

And in the wet heights your head

Filled the world with new dew.

Water rises to your waist,

You are made of wellsprings

And lakes shine on your forehead.

From your sources of density you draw

Water like vital tears

You pull the sands of ancient riverbeds

across celestial nights,

Crossing rough, dilated stone,

Breaking down on the way

All the salt of geology,

Cutting through forests of compact walls

Dislodging the muscles of quartz.

Make way for the entrance of the Waters!

- Pablo Neruda

photo: Tim Honey

 Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

- Louise Erdrich

photo: Tim Honey

 your wild and green veins have grown to this rocky outpost of my thirsting heart

i trust that sustenance will be found even in the most bare and dry season

it is the tip-ends of your tenacious roots that beat fiercest with craving life

and it'll grope and push through this wild darkness till it finds that rarest and sweetest of water

- Lara Kirsten

photo: Tim Honey

Climb

into

the present,

step

by step,

press your feet

onto the resinous wood

of this moment,

going up,

going up,

not very high,

Don't go all the way to heaven.

Reach

for apples,

not the clouds.

You

are

your present,

your own apple.

Pick it from

your tree.

Raise it

in your hand.

It's gleaming,

rich with stars.

Claim it.

Take a luxurious bite

out of the present,

and whistle along the road

of your destiny.

From "Ode to the present" by Pablo Neruda

photo: Conrad Lattimer

 stand in your own water!

only from your own spring

can you come to life

only from your own deep well of water

can you reach the heights of your being

stand tall in your fountain

stand strong in your rich cellular potential

grow wild and far

turn this handful of water into a wave

and turn this wave

into

your

ocean

~

- Lara Kirsten

photo: Gilles Chevalier

 Be wild as water

write, erase and rewrite

your purpose and direction.

Feast

on your seasonal moods

of fertility, fragmentation

self ruin and silence.

Be faithful

to the fire in your heart.

Strike the earth!

Split the sky!

Be true

to your shifting essence

of ice, mist and flow

and your curving bow

of liquid colour.

- Ian McCallum

photo: Conrad Lattimer

in die holte van my hand

hou ek die water van die land

en prewel 'n soete inkantasie

smekend dat ek van water kan leer

hoe om vlugtig deur jou vingers te vloei

en aarde toe te val sonder weerstand

in the hollow of my hand

i hold the water of the land

and murmur a sweet incantation

begging to learn from water how to

flow flightily through your fingers

and fall to the earth without resistance

- Lara Kirsten



photo: Gilles Chevalier

i look deep into the water

try to find its voice to teach me the rhythm of its flow

ah, i hear you water

i feel you water

i smell you water

i taste you water

i see you water

what will become

of me

without you?

- Lara Kirsten

photo: Gilles Chevalier

in touch with water

i am me

i am

uttterly

me

in touch with water

you are you

utterly

you

-

cup the water of life in your own hands

and bring to your mouth

swallow

and be blessed

- Lara Kirsten