pARTage Gasworks International Fellowship, Mauritius
February - April 2009
This residency began with an interest in the connection between particular geographic landforms and human spiritual activity. Smiths fellowship was intentionally scheduled to allow her to be in Mauritius for Maha Shivatree - an annual Hindu pilgrimage to the lake Ganga Taloa, in the centre of a volcano.
Taking part in the pilgrimage, undertaking research at MGI university library, and by attending numerous Hindu festivals and events to meet and speak to people, Smith collected stories about why and how the lake had become sacred. From the variety of responses this research prompted an interest in the significance of story telling more generally within Mauritian culture.
In order to explore oral traditions in Mauritius further, Smith curated a series of performance evenings to investigate l art de la parole. Smith invited writers, poets, rappers, dancers, artists, actors, and musicians to contribute to a series of performance evenings and to share a meal and discussion. The evenings were intentionally informal and form part of an ongoing investigation within Smiths practice into alternate social spaces for the experience of art.
As a result of the contacts made for these events Smith went on to collaborate with 6 Mauritian artists on a performance work which was presented at the Alliance Francaise on 3rd April. The performance formed a deconstruction of the process of telling, with an improvised narration by Smith in direct response to the physical actions of the audience. This narration was timed by Sandy Murden who acted as its punctuation and responded to by Norbert Planel on percussion, Gavin Poonoosamy on violin cello and guitar, Gaelle Tosse through gestural movement, Firoz Ghanty by a fictitious inscribed translation and Ismet Ghanti through spatial construction. By being the subject of the story as well as its listener the audience also took on the unsuspected role of author.
