El Faro: Dreamer & Goner
𝘌𝘭 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘰 was a 3-day long intervention for Dekoloniale, 2024. Performances, a workshop and a city walk invoked Dreamer & Goner, two Moko Jumbies who haunted back Berlin Wedding and Berlin Mitte.
Using the production, labour & trade history of a sunken container ship, the SS El Faro, I developed a costumed choreography for two Moko Jumbies (stiltwalkers), named Dreamer and Goner.
The performance haunted streets, buildings, electrical boxes, pissoirs, monuments and people along Dekoloniale’s memory-culture walk in the so-called African Quarter and Asian Streets (Berlin Wedding) as well as M-Straße and the Nikolaiviertel (Berlin Mitte). Dreamer and Goner were costumed in correspondence with my paintings and textile works, in which overalls, jumpsuits and other workwear often feature.
Working with bodies other than my own is an externalization of my own wrestling with grief, love, trust and mortality. How to live when you know you’re doomed? How to dream when you know you’re a goner?
The SS El Faro
In October 2015, the SS El Faro, a US-flagged cargo ship, was lost at sea after entering the eyewall of Hurricane Joaquin on her way from Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico. On the sea floor of the Bahamas, she joined dozens of known merchant vessels carrying cargoes that fuel the tyranny of empire even in the present day (molasses, sugar, lumber, military tings, cotton, whiskey, rum, madeira, Disney plush toys, Coca-Cola syrup, Nescafé instant coffee, etc.)
Another commodity that haunts the overheating Caribbean Sea is the Labour which is dependent on such cargo in terms of production as well as consumption. The bodies of the El Faro‘s 33-person crew rest among centuries of irretrievable loved-ones, mostly disposable people whose complexity and humanity is a threat to our entitlement to peace, pleasure and leisure.
Within the frame of the Dekoloniale Festival & Akademie 2024, I used the naval architecture of this 40-year old ship to do what might be called wrecking work, haunting back the Atlantic Ocean and the exploitative interests that continue to thrive along the same shipping routes.
Stiltwalkers at rest, on a low wall or in a tree, leaning on some impossibly high piece of our cityscape during Trinidad & Tobago Carnival, were so cool, so dread and so vulnerable. Like people in a boat who could be swallowed by the sea at any moment.
El Faro: Mas Camp
For this project, I temporarily transformed the Barazani space into a Mas Camp; this is the name of the masquerade-making hubs where costumes for Trinidad & Tobago Carnival are produced by passionate and often socially precarious persons. My own experience in such a space helped form my interest in maintaining communities of care.
Moko Jumbies: Earl Ward Jr. and Tekel Sylvan
Dramaturgy: Luiza Furtado
Videography: Isma Gane
Production Assistant: Kech
Backstage: Barazani Berlin e.V.
Moko Support: Kriston Chen / Alice Yard / 1000Mokos
Production Support: BPA// Berlin Program for Artists, Each One Teach One (Eoto) e.V., Barazani Berlin e.V.
Commissioned by: the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for Dekoloniale Festival & Academy 2024
