Stand in the Place Where it Was
I’ve been re-reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, sitting with the story as morning light fills my apartment. I begin my days immersed in Kentucky’s haunted dirt. Warm coffee slurp. What trace does the past leave upon the present?
Morrison writes:
“Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays…Even if the whole farm—every tree and grass blade of it dies. The picture is still there and what’s more, if you go there—you who never was there—if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you.” (Beloved, 43-44).
When I was last in Latvia, I was bombarded with images. Memories not my own, surging up from the ground. A geyser of pictures.
It was exactly as Morrison describes.
I stood in the place and there it was, rolls of images waiting for me.
I walked past a dense stretch of meadow, studded with clover’s perfume.
What happened here? I asked. And my eyes filled with it, like watching a movie.
Two men: one in work clothes, and one younger, freshly shaven. Bright squalor of blood. Their dispute was over a flock of cows. The older man had bought the cows from the younger man. But the cows were sickly. No way to know, they died within a week. And the older man murdered the younger man in the field.
Nothing goes away. Ever, really. Centuries pass. The picture remains. I stood in the field and un-blinked the sun. Clouds churned the horizon. Low breeze. Crickets fiddling between the blades.
Past interlaced with present. A constant search for the ghost in the machine.
I want to remain supple enough to see.
I was recently interviewed about my forthcoming exhibition, “Destruction Is and Is Not Forever,” which opens on May 15th in Latvia. I spoke about my archival work, historical research, and flickering images from the past.
I share the full interview with you below, in English and in Polish !
R E A D I N G S
(In) Dead Time by Dao Strom
Holy Land, Wasted by Ahmad Almallah and Huda Fakhreddine
The First Person by Kathryn Scanlan
Awe of Everything by Dara Barrois
H A P P E N I N G S
I am giving a (virtual) artist’s talk at the University of Delaware on Wednesday, April 23rd, at 11:30 am EST. The talk is entitled “Learn to Live with Empty Hands.” I’ll be discussing my work in Sabile, Latvia and Lublin, Poland.
If you’d like to register for the Zoom, you can do so here! I’ll speak for 40 minutes, with 10 minutes of Q&A to follow.
Berlin: Anna Lublina’s performance debuts in Berlin this weekend (April 25, 26, 27). “the land speaks to me of something shared: a prayer for ancestral rhythms” activates tap dance, extended vocal techniques, and live mixing to ask what the history of diasporic Jewish rhythm (and its embodiment) can teach us in a time marked by polarization and violence. I’ll be at the Friday night show—see you there?
