Silence as a Room#To1 of #5, Richmond, Karoo…. Here, I create a structure for Silence… an understanding and experience of Silence from the perspective of a brown woman in southern Africa. The artist, a petite woman in her fifties, engages the earth with a pick, shovel, and spade…sometimes with help, often on her own. BUT she had to develop this artwork, one that you can walk in, sit, meditate or just sit … it is/was a must. A dream she lived with for a while. How do ‘we” experience silence? What does it mean? For her? For me? For you? The structure, embedded 1m into the earth, is a womb, with a 1.5m dome-shaped roof across the interior space of 5m in diameter made from the same earth. The artist fits the structure into the veld, into the earth, into the silence, and into the environment. it barely protrudes …you must want to see it…to find it. Shaped like so many anthills all around. The magnificent builders – small as she is small. they go about their business – doing what they must do, what they were born to do, what they know, what their instincts guide them to…
Finding myself on a farm just outside of the town of Richmond, a farm called Stillewaters, I find myself drawn to it, to its name and the possibility of finding the space for Silence (as a Room). The farm was lush and lovely after the heavy rains, the flooding at this time of the year…a Karoo that sang and felt fresh, renewed with possibility. (the farmer knew that of course, it would be short-lived) But for now, it was breathtaking where red earth became red flowing rivers in veld that spoke of generations…of walking and surviving; of living and dying; of being one with it and not, and now of OWNING. I found another place to create this structure, this artwork that you… experience the Silence in… a space that is open and accessible… it may live or it may die, but for now…you who are keen to find the Silence may find it here…Silence as a Room#1 of #5 Richmond, Karoo (on the opposite side where you do not have to enter through a gate…) This video conveys to me the power of the natural world (of which we are a part), where single-crop farms and a lack of diversity through sheep farming (industry) have impacted the land over the past 200 or more years. Some farmers are now ‘introducing’ game in an attempt to cultivate a diversity that used to be there before hunting for pleasure and gain became the order of the day. It is now too, the order of the day…(some thoughts on what is illegal hunting and hunting that is condoned…more on that later). Crop spraying and land and crops and locusts are what this video is about…but, its…much…deeper…than… that…
