1998, 09:11 minutes, colour, English
TAPECODE 236.03
This tape continues and extends a dialogue begun in Harare during my time as the Visiting Artist in Residence at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (1989-1994).
“Culture in this country is determined by those people who determine whether this house should be oblong or square or round, those people who determine whether the stairs should be circling or they should be straight up, those people who determine or not at this moment in the history of Zimbabwe we need 50 new highrise buildings in Harare, even though there are millions of homeless people, even on the streets of Harare itself.”
So speaks cultural historian and poet Tafataona Mahoso, against the grain, playfully resisting the frames that would contain or limit his meaning.
The issue is culture and representation: the experience is dense, evocative, a blending of text and image, tradition and the new, the known and unknowable, point and counterpoint, in rhythms of silence and speaking.