This work is an audio piece and installation that is the culmination of 2 months of communication between 2 collaborators living in each others antipodean country. A chap I made contact with in Hawaii, and a friend of a friend who lived in Namibia.
Wherever one stands on this earth there is an opposite, an antipodes; (more often than not though, the opposite location is ocean. The earth is 75% ocean). It insists that I contemplate time, space and place. I am curious to look at similarities… and differences – while one antipode is sleeping the other working. While one is in winter the other summer. While one is today, the other is often yesterday, or tomorrow!
I looked at the staple food of each location to start conversations. These conversations were largely by email. Poi was couriered, frozen, from Hawaii, and recipe books, maps, newspapers, information and photos from both Hawaii and Namibia make up this investigative installation.
Part of the project included a dinner I held in my home – a Social Sculpture, where we ate Poi and Laulaus to start, (Hawaii), followed by Cornmeal, Lamb Stew and Beans, (Namibia). Desert was Haupia, (Hawaii).
We ‘ate’ the landscape, imagined how the folks in these places would eat this food – what they would cook it upon, would they eat outside under the stars as we sat in doors with the fire lit?
We enjoyed the natural feel of the lamb stew, though eating cornmeal with our fingers was somehow thought of as rude by some, how different the lamb was to our own which we dress up. The texture of poi was as alien as the taste – how can something be savoury/sweet and sharp, soft, vegetably and almost like yoghurt?
Audio piece and installation shown at The Hub, Arnolfini Building, Bristol, 2008
Also shown at Dartington College of Arts, 2008