On Substance

performance art

duration 1 h

invited by and presented at Future Ritual

The stool of a chief, a statue used for worship, an ancestor’s image, a pipe with tobacco still in it, a comb, a vessel to contain food

YOU HIDE ME by Nii Kwate Owoo (1970)

At the border of the land flowing with milk and honey* discourses around acquisition, conservation, patrimony and their definitions that are torn in a personal and global tracing of lineages of substance (ab)use. Staple food elements such as butter and flour - echoing extractivism - are juxtaposed with some of their ancestral, ceremonial, and ritualistic usage. Consumption of culture, gender, spirituality, race, religion, and food is questioned in this offering. With vulnerability and complicity, n:u (melissandre varin) interrogates healing as destruction and destruction as healing.

*Here referring to spiritual justifications of expansionist and genocidal governments.