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UNTITLED soil performance

I do not have a definitive reminiscence of the origin and purpose of this collective performance. Even with a photographic timeline and a handful of notes, two years and a pandemic have shattered my certainty of the moment. UNTITLED soil performance had a name, but it is long gone. 

What is still significant and vivid is the collective moment. This residency was my last residency before the virus, the lockdown and the dogma about social distancing. I was in Ongata Rongai in South of Nairobi on Syowia Kyambi’sland. It was my first time in Kenya, and first time in Africa. 
We were a collective, a mosaic of people from all around the world reaching this ancestral soil. We all felt the connection with the soil, something underneath, somehow inside but foreign to us. The soil was talking to us, taking us in.
Back then, the residency held by the Center for Arts Design Social Research was about archives but also how to de-archive them. 
Now I have warm memories of this moment of togetherness among researchers, artists and activists. 
I feel more than I remember this moment. It was an impalpable and unspeakable experience… 

The group I was a part of decided and asked the other members of the residency to work with the soil. To be a part of the place at that precise moment, demanded accountability I thought. On a raw and outdoor studio, more than ten pair of hands dug through 
the soil and connected their imaginations, intentions or designs with it. They shaped forms and totems, mimicked nature, disturbed the equilibrium and displaced the soil to another part of the field around the studio. They excavated an organic archive to individually de-archive it and created a collective but asynchronous ritual. 

I do not have pictures of me during the performance, I took most of them. Still, I remember what I wanted from this moment. My need and desires were to put myself into the soil. I didn’t know if I would come back to Kenya and Africa again. I had to cease the moment, literally.
I didn’t take any amount of soil. I started to punch it with my bear hands as hard that I could until it hurt me. 
I didn’t want to archive or de-archive. My intention was to inscribe myself into this foreign soil, and be certain that from this moment on, we would know each other. 

UNTITLED soil performance is not forgotten.