Fractured Memory

This performance is being presented in double bill with Tropicopolitan Objects by Ho Rui An.

Through interlacing literary text, video projection and storytelling, Ogutu poses the question – how to deal with an inherited history full of complexity. The piece reimagines James Baldwin’s essay ‘Princes and Powers’ which describes in great detail a congress of Afro-intellectuals, writers, artists, philosophers and theorists, held at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1956. Central to his research and this performance is a multiplicity of perspectives which includes Baldwin’s essay, historical archive, and personal experience. 

Through examining the legacy of the congress, injecting the personal and creating fiction, the performance becomes a shift of perspectives, disjointed voices and fractured contours. The performance aims to create an acknowledgement of a shared history and find a new vocabulary to deal with its uncomfortable truths. Ogutu explores the borders between oral and visual narrative in order to create a multidimensional space that is discontinuous and characterized by fragmented time. A space where the teller and the image form a dialogue. 

‘The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do… And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to assess the history that has placed one where one is, and formed one’s point of view.’ James Baldwin