Atlantic Worlds Gallery, National Maritime Museum, February 2024. Photo: Big Skilly Media
GESTURES TOWARDS TELLING A NEW NARRATIVE
Durational performance featuring drums by Irvin Pascal inside the Atlantic Worlds gallery, National Maritime Museum
Duration: 24:00 mins
As part of The Collective Makers' first artist intervention event at the National Maritime Museum, this intimate durational performance for a limited audience functioned as a symbolic farewell to the Atlantic Worlds gallery before it temporarily closed its doors to make way for phase one of a new interpretation that resonates and connects more positively with the descendants and those impacted by the transatlantic slave trade. The performance was devised using a blend of chanting and movements to a live drum until the goal of inviting the spiritual ancestors into the gallery felt reached.
THE CHANNELING CHANT
I come here as we,
I come here as we,
I come here as we,
I come here as we...
We,
The spirits of those who were enslaved.
And we,
The spirits of those who were enslaved,
Who did not survive;
The Hold,
The Middle passage,
The Plantation life,
or the Plantation torture.
And so we have returned here this evening,
To ensure that this gallery
Centres us,
With us,
For us.
Centring us, with us, for us,
Centring us, with us, for us,
Centring us, with us, for us,
Centring us, with us, for us,
Centring us, with us, for us...
