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Imminent and Eminent Ecologies

IMMINENT AND EMINENT ECOLOGIES - a group exhibition co-curated by Leora Farber and Brenton Maart under VIAD’s newly established Bioart + Design Africa (BA+DA) research stream.
FADA GALLERY, FADA BLDG., BUNTING ROAD, AUCKLAND PARK, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2024

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Forts of Sand; Passage; Strange Fruit (2024): 3 Videos, About 30 sec to 1 min each; Dimensions variable. Imminent and Eminent Ecologies Exhibition. ©Miliswa Ndziba

ARTIST STATEMENT:
My project began with the findings of the archaeological research of the Slave Wrecks Project that used spatial inquiry methods to map the site and site conditions of the Sao Jose shipwreck on the ocean floor off the coast of Clifton 4th Beach, Cape Town. While most of the wreckage has been lost to time, the archeologists used historical archives to identify it from artefacts found on-site. I attempted to fill in the gaps in the archive through child-play-as-analogue-modelling. I used this data as the starting point for my methodology of sand play and performance in order to visualise the conditions of the Sao Jose-Paquete de Africa shipwreck and its cargo of drowned enslaved Mozambican children.

I then introduced mycelium — an analogue for algae found in the ocean — to the ecosystem I created. Through eutrophication, the remains of the drowned slave children transform through metaphoric materialism into an algal/mycelium bloom that, in turn, drifts from Cape Town to Mozambique, returning to end its journey with the colonisation of the Nossa Senhora de Baluarte chapel on the Island of Mozambique. The children use an event of an algal bloom at the site of the shipwreck as a vessel to rise to the surface of the water. As non/living matter, the growth of the mycelium becomes an analogue for the formation of the commensalistic¹ relationship that the children have formed with the algal bloom. I model the journey along the South African coastline through play, in which the drift algae² is taken up within the ballast of a ship, and discharged in the Mozambique Channel. The algae becomes a vehicle, through which the children return to the Island of Mozambique. In effect, then, my work is a bioart map-as-metaphor for a proposed 4th passage of the slave trade that takes the children back home to their final resting place in Mozambique. My work on the exhibition is the modelling of this process.

Forts of Sand Still (2024): Video, 1 min; Dimensions variable. Imminent and Eminent Ecologies Exhibition. ©Miliswa Ndziba

Passage Still (2024): Videos, 1 min, 7 seconds; Dimensions variable. Imminent and Eminent Ecologies Exhibition. ©Miliswa Ndziba

The Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte is protected both from demolition and the natural process of decay, and is required by the Law of the Protection of the Mozambican Cultural Patrimony (Law No. 10/88) to be secured and maintained. The protection of this and other such colonial structures become not only the protection of the structures, but of its fortifying, territorializing, and dispossessing paradigms as well. Thus, the colonisation of the ruin by algae, which is fantasised as it returns to the earth, dissolving, vanishing back into landscape upon which it was placed, might also be a subversion of the mastery of nature agenda in western culture.

At the Island of Mozambique the children begin to colonise the coastal landscape, starting with the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, through the vehicle that the drift algae provides. The algae breaks down the veneer that preserves the chapel in a state of decay, which reveals the state of ruination that festers beneath the surface in Stone Town on the Island of Mozambique. As the algae intermingles with, and is eventually taken over by the rot, the children take on their final form as a foundation for new growth. I model the colonisation of the chapel ruin through an experiment, in which the mycelium competes against contaminants that I have introduced to the ecosystem. The contaminates ultimately colonise the mycelium and the model of the chapel ruin façade, as mould (Šašić Zorić et al, 2023).

Strange Fruit Still (2024): Video, 47 seconds; Dimensions variable. Imminent and Eminent Ecologies Exhibition. ©Miliswa Ndziba

My work challenges preservation laws, defying what it means to preserve colonial structures. I propose that the preservation of colonial structures is also the preservation of this colonial paradigm in which we still live. I thus make a case for the natural degradation of these buildings, where the buildings are transformed into generative landscapes, where they begin to melt back into the landscape, and then provide ground for alternative paradigms to be ushered in.

Installation images of the exhibition Imminent and Eminent Ecologies, FADA Gallery, 2024, curated by VIAD. ©Anthea Pokro

Despite the fact that my work sits in fabulation, it provides avenues for real-life application, such as the use of alternative building materials to make an architecture that can melt back into the landscape. In addition to questioning what it means to make buildings, I also explore new ways of modelling spatial conditions, particularly those that are as a result of natural events. As a design, my work also proposes a myth, owing to how it works together with existing social beliefs to produce alternate versions of reality (and the future) that are powerful enough to override the current present. I would like the audience to walk away with the knowledge that there are alternative worlds waiting to be revealed.
1 Commensalism is a relationship between two species, in which one benefits from the association (nutrients, shelter, support, locomotion), while the other (the host) is unaffected (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004).
2 Drifting algal mats are “conglomerates of (usually) ephemeral filamentous algae” (Arroyo&Bonsforff, 2016) that break away from the main body of algae to reform as mats of different sizes. They provide shelter for juvenile fish, and a mode of transportation for various species of invertebrates. As a result, they enhance the colonisation of new areas, when they are swept by strong currents that allow them to reach far away areas. (Arroyo&Bonsforff, 2016)

Sources consulted:
Arroyo, Nina & Bonsdorff, Erik. (2016). The Role of Drifting Algae for Marine Biodiversity. 10.4324/9781315370781-6. [Accessed 28 April 2024].
Šašić Zorić L, Janjušević L, Djisalov M, Knežić T, Vunduk J, Milenković I, Gadjanski I. Molecular Approaches for Detection of Trichoderma Green Mold Disease in Edible Mushroom Production. Biology (Basel). 2023 Feb 14;12(2):299. doi: 10.3390/biology12020299. PMID: 36829575; PMCID: PMC9953464.