I'd like for you to take a moment to imagine this with me. You're a little girl of five years old. Sitting in front of a mirror, you ask yourself, "Do I exist?" In this space, there is very little context, and so you move into a different one, one filled with people. Surely, now you know you're not a figment of your own imagination. You breathe their air. You see them, so they must see you. And yet, you still can't help but wonder: Do I only exist when people speak to me?
我想让各位和我一起想象一个画面。 你是一个五岁的小女孩, 坐在镜子前, 你问自己, “我存在吗?” 这个空间太清静了, 于是你来到另一个地方, 一个满是人的地方。 当然,现在你知道 你不是自己虚构的事物。 你和他们呼吸着相同的空气, 你看得见他们, 他们也看得见你。 然而,你仍会情不自禁地想: 我只有在和他人对话 的时候才存在吗?
Pretty heavy thoughts for a child, right? But through various artworks that reflect upon our society, I came to understand how a young black girl can grow up feeling as if she's not seen, and perhaps she doesn't exist. You see, if young people don't have positive images of themselves and all that remains are negative stereotypes, this affects their self-image. But it also affects the way that the rest of society treats them.
对一个孩子来说, 这样的想法很沉重,对吗? 但是通过各种各样 可以反映社会问题的艺术作品, 我逐渐了解到一个年轻 的黑人女孩如何成长, 觉得好像没人看得见她, 甚至是她根本不存在。 很明显,如果年轻人 对自身没有正面认识, 只有负面印象时, 这会影响到他们的自我认知, 这同样也会影响 社会其他人对待他们的方式。
I discovered this having lived in Cape Town for about five years at the time. I felt a deep sense of dislocation and invisibility. I couldn't see myself represented. I couldn't see the women who've raised me, the ones who've influenced me, and the ones that have made South Africa what it is today. I decided to do something about it.
我发现这一点时, 已经在开普敦生活了大概五年。 我深深地感受到了 无归属和被忽视的滋味。 我看不到自己是什么样的, 我看不到养育我的女人, 那些影响我的人, 那些造就今日南非的人。 我决定做一些事情。
What do you think when you see this? If you were a black girl, how would it make you feel? Walking down the street, what does the city you live in say to you? What symbols are present? Which histories are celebrated? And on the other hand, which ones are omitted?
当你看到这个时你想到了什么? 如果你是一个黑人女孩, 你会有什么感觉? 沿着这条路往下走, 你居住的城市对你表达了什么? 展示了什么标志事物? 庆祝了什么历史事件? 从另一方面来说, 哪些东西被省略了?
You see, public spaces are hardly ever as neutral as they may seem. I discovered this when I made this performance in 2013 on Heritage Day. Cape Town is teeming with masculine architecture, monuments and statues, such as Louis Botha in that photograph. This overt presence of white colonial and Afrikaner nationalist men not only echoes a social, gender and racial divide, but it also continues to affect the way that women -- and the way, particularly, black women -- see themselves in relation to dominant male figures in public spaces. For this reason, among others, I don't believe that we need statues. The preservation of history and the act of remembering can be achieved in more memorable and effective ways.
公共空间难以 像它们看起来那样中立, 当我在2013年遗产日 演出时发现了这一点。 开普敦充满了阳刚的建筑, 纪念碑还有雕塑, 如照片中的路易斯 博塔。 这个明显存在着 白人殖民主义和民族主义的人, 不仅反映了社会、性别和种族分化, 它还持续影响着女性—— 特别是黑人女性——看待自己的方式, 如何将自身和在公共场合占主导地位 的男性联系起来。 为此, 我觉得我们不需要雕塑。 历史的保存和记忆 可以通过更值得纪念 和有效的方式实现。
As part of a year-long public holiday series, I use performance art as a form of social commentary to draw people's attention to certain issues, as well as addressing the absence of the black female body in memorialized public spaces, especially on public holidays. Women's Day was coming up. I looked at what the day means -- the Women's March to the union buildings in 1956, petitioning against the pass laws. Juxtaposed with the hypocrisy of how women are treated, especially in public spaces today, I decided to do something about it.
作为年公共假日系列的一部分, 我用表演艺术评价社会, 将人们的目光聚焦到某些问题上, 并弥补黑人女性 在公共纪念场合中的缺失, 特别是公共假日。 妇女节就要来了。 我查了一下妇女节的意义—— 1956年,妇女到联合国大厦游行, 请愿反对通过的法案, 并反对虚伪对待女性, 特别是在如今的公共场所。 我决定做一些什么。
Headline:
标题:
[Women in miniskirt attacked at taxi rank]
【穿着迷你裙的女性 在出租车站遭遇袭击】
How do I comment on such polar opposites? In the guise of my great-grandmother, I performed bare-breasted, close to the taxi rank in KwaLanga. This space is also called Freedom Square, where women were a part of demonstrations against apartheid laws. I was not comfortable with women being seen as only victims in society. You might wonder how people reacted to this.
我应该对这种事情做何评价呢? 我伪装成我曾祖母的样子, 真空上阵, 在瓜朗嘎出租车候车站附近。 那里也被称为自由广场, 在那儿,女性是反对 种族隔离法示威的一部分。 我不喜欢女性仅仅 被当作社会的受害者。 你可能会好奇人们对此行为的反应。
(Video) Woman: (Cheering)
(视频)女:(欢呼)
Woman 2 (offscreen): Yes!
女2(画外):太棒了!
Sethembile Msezane: Pretty cool, huh?
挺酷的,对吧?
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
So I realized that through my performances, I've been able to make regular people reflect upon their society, looking at the past as well as the current democracy.
我意识到通过我的表演, 我可以让普通人反思这个社会, 看看过去和现在的民主。
(Video) Man (offscreen): She's been there since three o'clock.
(视频)男(画外): 她从三点开始就在那儿了。
Man 2 (offscreen): Just before three. About an hour still?
男2(画外):三点之前吧, 已经一个小时没动了。
Man 1: Yeah. It's just a really hot day.
男1:是的,今天非常热。
Man 1: It's very interesting. It's very powerful. I think it's cool. I think a lot of people are quick to join a group that's a movement towards something, but not many people are ready to do something as an individual.
男1:这很有意思。 很有力量, 我觉得很酷。 我认为不久就会有很多人加入她, 这是通往某个事业的重要一步, 但只有少数人做好了 独自行动的准备。
Man 2: So it's the individual versus the collective.
男2:所以这是个人和群体的对抗。
Man 1: Yeah. So I think her pushing her own individual message in performance ... it's powerful. Yeah, I think it's quite powerful that she's doing it on her own. I'd be interested to know why she's using hair extensions as wings, or whatever those things are meant to be. They are wings, yes?
男1:是的。 我认为她在表演中 传达了自身的信息—— 这很厉害。 我觉得她依靠自己的力量很令人敬佩, 我想知道她为什么用假发作翅膀, 或者那些东西意味着什么。 它们是翅膀吗?
Woman 3: With her standing there right now, I think it's just my interpretation that we are bringing the statue down and bringing up something that's supposed to represent African pride, I think. Or something like that. Something should stand while Rhodes falls, I think that's what it's saying. Yeah. Yes. Thank you.
女3:她现在站在那里, 我的理解是, 我们把那个雕塑弄倒, 树立起一个 象征着非洲骄傲的东西, 或者类似的东西。 当罗德倒下之后 应该要有新的东西起来, 这应该就是她要表达的。 是的,谢谢。
Man 3: What is behind me represents the African culture. We can't have the colonialist law, so we need to remove all these colonial statues. We have have our own statues now, our African leaders -- Bhambatha, Moshoeshoe, Kwame Nkrumah -- all those who paid their lives for our liberation. We can't continue in the 21st century, and after 21 years of democracy, have the colonizers in our own country. They belong somewhere. Maybe in a museum; not here. I mean learning institutions, places where young people, young minds are being shaped. So we cannot continue to have Louis Botha, Rhodes, all these people, because they're representing the colonialism.
男3:我后面的东西代表了非洲文化。 我们不应该有殖民主义法律, 我们应该把这些殖民雕塑全都弄走。 我们现在有了自己的雕塑, 我们非洲的领导人巴巴塔, 莫岁岁,夸梅·恩克鲁玛—— 那些为了我们的自由牺牲生命的人。 21世纪我们不能继续那样下去了, 不能在取得民主的21年之后, 在我们国家还保留殖民者。 他们属于别的地方, 也许是博物馆,但不是这里。 我的意思是教育机构 是塑造年轻思想的地方。 我们不能继续放路易斯·博塔、 罗德这些人的雕像, 因为他们代表了殖民主义。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Sethembile Msezane: On April 9, 2015, the Cecil John Rhodes statue was scheduled to be removed after a month of debates for and against its removal by various stakeholders. This caused a widespread interest in statues in South Africa. Opinions varied, but the media focused on problematizing the removal of statues. On that -- well, that year, I had just begun my master's at the University of Cape Town. During the time of the debate of the statue, I had been having reoccurring dreams about a bird. And so I started conjuring her mentally, spiritually and through dress. On that day, I happened to be having a meeting with my supervisors, and they told me that the statue was going to fall on that day. I told them that I'd explain later, but we had to postpone the meeting because I was going to perform her as the statue came down.
2015年4月9日, 塞西尔·约翰·罗兹雕像 计划被拆除, 不同的利益相关者间展开了 为期一个月的激烈讨论。 这在南非引起了人们 对雕塑的广泛兴趣。 人们意见不一,但媒体的焦点 集中在移除雕塑的问题。 那年,我刚开始在开普敦大学 攻读研究生。 在讨论雕塑问题的那段时间里, 我重复做着一个梦, 关于一只鸟。 于是我开始 从精神上和穿着上召唤她。 那天, 我碰巧要和指导老师开会, 他们告诉我当天要拆除雕塑。 我告诉他们我要推迟会议, 稍后解释原因, 因为我要在雕塑倒下的时候表演她。
Her name was Chapungu. She was a soapstone bird that was looted from Great Zimbabwe in the late 1800s, and is still currently housed in Cecil John Rhodes's estate in Cape Town. On that day, I embodied her existence using my body, while standing in the blazing sun for nearly four hours. As the time came, the crane came alive. The people did, too -- shouting, screaming, clenching their fists and taking pictures of the moment on their phones and cameras. Chapungu's wings, along with the crane, rose to declare the fall of Cecil John Rhodes.
她的名字是查平谷。 她是在19世纪晚期从津巴布韦 被洗劫来的皂石鸟。 目前,她还在开普敦的 塞西尔·约翰·罗兹的庄园里。 那天, 我用身体来展现她的存在, 在烈日下站了快四个小时。 那时, 鹤苏醒了。 人们也是—— 人们大叫, 尖叫, 握紧拳头, 用手机和相机记录下了那个时刻。 查平谷的翅膀 以及那只鹤 宣告了塞西尔·约翰·罗德斯的离开。
(Applause)
(掌声)
Euphoria filled the air as he became absent from his base, while she remained still, very present, half an hour after his removal.
他被移除时,广场的空气中 弥漫着喜悦的气氛, 在与此同时, 她继续保持不动, 一直在那里, 甚至是在雕像被移除的半个小时后。
Twenty-three years after apartheid, a new generation of radicals has arisen in South Africa. The story of Chapungu and Rhodes in the same space and time asks important questions related to gender, power, self-representation, history making and repatriation. From then on, I realized that my spiritual beliefs and dreams texture my material reality. But for me, Chapungu's story felt incomplete. This soapstone bird, a spiritual medium and messenger of God and the ancestors, needed me to continue her story. And so I dabbled in the dream space a little bit more, and this is how "Falling" was born.
种族隔离被禁止的23年后, 南非出现了新生代激进分子。 查平谷和罗德的故事 代表了非常重要的问题, 关于性别, 权利, 自我象征, 创造历史, 以及遣返。 从那以后, 我意识到我的精神信仰与理想 使我的物质生活变得丰富多彩。 但对我而言, 查平谷的故事尚未完结。 皂石鸟, 上帝与我们祖先的精神使者, 需要我继续她的故事。 所以我深入这个梦境, “坠落”就这样诞生了。
[A film by Sethembile Msezane]
【演讲者的电影】
(Video) (A capella singing)
(视频)
[FALLING]
【坠落】
(Applause)
(掌声)
In the film, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Germany share a common story about the soapstone birds that were looted from Great Zimbabwe. After Zimbabwe gained its independence, all the birds except for one were returned to the monument. "Falling" explores the mythological belief that there will be unrest until the final bird is returned.
在电影中, 津巴布韦,南非还有德国 有着同样的故事, 关于从津巴布韦洗劫来的皂石鸟。 津巴布韦独立后, 除了一种鸟,其他所有鸟 都回到了纪念碑。 “坠落”探索了神话中会动摇的信仰, 直到最后那只鸟回来。
Through my work, I have realized a lot about the world around me: how we move through spaces, who we choose to celebrate and who we remember. Now I look in the mirror and not only see an image of myself, but of the women who have made me who I am today. I stand tall in my work, celebrating women's histories, in the hope that perhaps one day, no little black girl has to ever feel like she doesn't exist.
通过我的工作, 我加深了对周围世界的了解, 我们如何移动, 我们选择歌颂什么人, 铭记什么人。 现在我看向镜子时 不仅仅看到了我自己, 还看到了塑造我的其他女性。 我在工作中毫不畏惧地 歌颂女性历史, 希望有一天 不再有黑人女孩觉得 她好像不存在一样。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)