Catching up

Here is where I stand right now:

My Centennial Scholar project has five elements. That there are five parts is not arbitrary, but a gesture towards the inspiration for this whole thing, which is the call to prayer. The call to prayer happens five times a day, so my idea is that each element of the project represents a piece of a day, or in a more abstract sense, a piece of a whole. These pieces, like pieces of a puzzle, complement one another and they are related thematically, however they do not all fit together. My objective is for each piece to require a different kind of interaction with time, so each is on its own temporal plane. An art installation has a very different relationship with time than a book, or a live performance. So, as each part of this time-puzzle operates on a different plane, the pieces can never fit together completely. There is no way to fashion a convenient whole, even though each part is working toward that end. By this I mean that within each component I will seek to investigate and/or ruminate on ideas and experiences with a unifying thematic construct, but I don't expect to create a clean package that has a pithy take-home message.

Here's what I have so far in terms of a delineation of each element:


1. Installation
- Site specific (involving transformation of a space, dealing with issues of sacred spaces/spaces that are reserved for certain populations)
- Involving visual, sonic, and spatial manipulations
- Thematically concerned with religion
Why? --> I observed that for Senegalese, in general, religion is a 24/7 thing; it is the most important and constant thing, not just in your life, but about you personally as well
- VISUAL: Maybe I can make a space to look like an exaggerated version of someone's UGB (Université Gaston Berger) dorm room. I would need to include Catholic and Muslim imagery, which would be interesting. I could have in chalk on the wall "Heure de prières" and fiches about meetings and homework like in the Resto. It would be really cool to have the images of marabouts on the walls, and prayers written in arabic. Should the imagery be indicative of the actual religious demographics of Senegal (94% Muslim, 5% Catholic, 1% animist), or the demographics as I encountered them, with a larger input of Catholicism?
It might be important for me to put on the wall one of those blurbs like in a museum exhibit explaining the link among this part and the other parts of the project.

- SONIC: Obviously call to prayer, baye fall songs and whatever that other confrerie that I can't remember the name of right now that sang a lot was, people saying Hail Mary and other Catholic prayers in French, drumming, peolple saying "toubab"/"maay ma 100 francs"/etc., goats/cows/cats making noise



2. Performance
- Thematically concerned with LEARNING, within that umbrella: interpersonal interaction (issues of translation and miscommunication); repetition and the line between something being void of meaning and being imbued with new meaning or transcendent meaning through repetition
- For text, use Baobab Center workbook and Gangui; also wolof/English proverbs; compare the nearly-impossible-to-describe-or-explain Wolof sayings to perceptions of English or American sayings (Time is money...); incorporate Senegalese non-word verbal indications like EH! and pss-pss
- For movement: shaking hands, the question gesture, playing with spatial relationships (maing people stay very physically close -- it would be awesome if I could find a really old station wagon as a sept-place/set piece to give people the idea of what it is like to travel); the action of prayer (Julli, muslim prayer, vs. Catholic prayer: both very different, but unifying elements like prayer beads/rosaries)
- Tie in WAITING, also stopping things to pray/call to prayer\
-- Don't necessarily want it to be a narrative, but how to keep it coherent and engaging? Maybe structure it like a disrupted narrative, like a Wolof class that keeps being interrupted, to tie in idea of learning
REMEMBER: this is a medium where I can't slow things down, but the only medium where I can actively prolong/defer things
Maybe incorporate attaaya (Senegalese tea ceremony)? Have it take place over the course of three cups of tea?



3. Puzzle
- A sudoku that looks like the one from my 365 Days of Sudoku book that became my functional diary while abroad (more information about Sudoku tie in and Sudoku journal is forthcoming); include a place to put the date and a space for notes, just like in my Sudoku book. Have out for people to find and complete while they wait for performance to start/after they check out the installation?
- Maybe the puzzle accompanies an explanation of the relationship between my theme of time and my ideas about puzzles in general; for instance, on the post card that I have to create to publicize my project I will have one side be the Sudoku puzzle image and the other side be an introduction/advertisement for my project. This way the post card is both a tool for advertising and an integral component of the project itself.




4. Written thing
- Thematically concerned with: not just being the perpetual outsider, but investigating the puzzle-solving idea that element 3. introduces; I was an outsider trying to figure out a massive, unsolveable, cross-cultural puzzle, and the stories I include in this part all deal with that element of trying to figure out what is going on without having the necessary tools that a cultural insider or an initiate into the mysterious Senegalese rites would have; again, more elaboration of the puzzle theme is forthcoming
- Stories about:
*Pilgrimage to Poponguine with the Catholics
*Midnight party at Cheikh's house in Dakar
*A hilarious afternoon with Faatu
*A weirdo afternoon with Talla Lo
*Rachel/Youssou's wedding
*The bus to/from Mali, getting to Dogon, the sketchy Bamako hotel
*Unpleasant encounters with the Talibe?
*Passover!
*Singing at the Journée d'Integration des Informaticiens
*A djembe lesson
-It might be cool if everything was handwritten



5. THIS BLOG -- meta!!
- Thematically concerned with documentation/memory and remembering
- Keeping track of the process of putting together this project, including seeking out memories from others who were abroad with me, working through new ideas or refining ideas about other elements of the project, allowing the audience to participate in the documentation and memory of the project itself





SO! Those are all the things I want to accomplish in my project. I still have a lot of figuring out to do, if merely logistically (like, where will I find a space to put on this crazy thing!?). The idea of this blog is that I will rigorously and diligently track the progress of my project from here on. At some point, I might investigate how I can use this space to encourage interaction from/with disparate geographic circles (like, people in Senegal and people in the US!). Since this entry has largely served to catch up on what I have been doing for the last three months, hopefully forthcoming entries will be more immediate.

Ba beneen yoon! (that's Wolof for "until we encounter each other again along the road")