the learning journey is almost over.

 

yesterday we went on a tour of constitution hill

as you all know, south africa's constitution is only 12 years old.  Justice Albie Sachs, who was a lawyer during the struggle and revolution here (his parents were players in teh movement too), and is also a writer and art lover, was charged with "decorating" the new law courts that would house and uphold this "new democracy" as it's called.  It is built on the site of the Johannesburg prison, a site of despicable torture and inhumanity.  That history remains, and what is built around and above it is a strange miracle.  It is full of art and architecture designed not to simultanously remind and transform the terrifying past.  When we were in there the sun set, and the building was full of that sunset, and the smell of fresh night air. There are large black slabs of marble, with notched carved into them to represent the days that the heroes of change spent in jail. 

 

day before yesterday we were in Soweto.  First stop was the Soweto Mountain of Hope, SOMOHO, which is run by a man named Mandola, who was very forthcoming with the troubles and successes met turning a visciously dangeous "mountain" (in fact it's a quite low red hill) that was covered only with a watch tower, used at first for the colonizer to survey surrondings, and mounds of garbage.  Mandola began a project to use that garbage as a resource.  The mountainof Hope is a garden, an art installation, a site of fundamental transformation and indeed hope.  THe waste is turned into art like hats woven out of plastic hats, new kinds of paaper mache, and a kind of clay that is made of paper, wire and tin can sculpture, and further innovations most inspiring.  Oddly, and somewhat disturbingly, the mountain was inaugurated by Jean Chretien during a sustainability summit.  One of the men on our journey, King Zorro, knew Madola, and has spent time at his project.  When we went to the store from which the waste creations are sold, there was a woman there...her voice was this incredible burnished gold.  We all in a circle had a freestyle song and poetry circle than gives me shivers even now to think of.

 

Next stop in Soweto was Kliptown.  A place that has been infrastructurally ignored, but that is rich with a warmth and exuberance, in the midst of it's powerful intent to survive, and to care for each other.  We were welcomed, and even tough we were in theor home, many people welcomed us in a way that was moving and extremely generous.  Some of course did look suspicion at the trailings of a group of youn artists.  What were we doin there?  Actually that question is frefront a lot of the time.  One one hand it is obvious, to exchange experiences with other social aritsts is of the utmost importance to our individual and global development.  But on the other, of course, I am touring a place where the transformation of the osul is happening.  Where it is alive.  It is not a thing to watch.  The project that we were visiting was called SKY.  Before lunch i had a minute to freestyle with some wicked hip hop heads, i have video to post (they said it was cool) THey fed us, and then there was a show.  THere was a show.  We all shared in a show, a sharing of what is happening there.  There are some magnificent artists, and soptrytellers, drummers, dancers.  Whew.  My spirit soared.  But in reflection, my coleaugues from South Africa had had a very different experience.  

 

I'm trying to learn how to negotiate this intense learning.  SOme people here have great ideas about how to do such a thing.  I will report those ideas upon my return and to the best of my ability.

 

such love

 

nadia 

 

Nadia Chaney's Blog Entry #5

October 3 2006

i'm in london, internet is expensive so i keep this short.
i'm going back to joburg.
i'm so impressed with pioneers of change, you gotta check these people out.  they create living systems of organzing,
the facilitation of this conference was so fluid, so synchronistic, so magical, so caring.  i am absolutely touched by the gentleness and awareness of the people who represent this org.  i want to do lots more with and for them.
furthermore, jo-burg is A-live! and the arts scene is thriving and exciting. social justice is very relevant, and people are anything but passive, at least the ones i met.
i'm still gonna write that report starting tomorrow, so no worries, the vagueness won't last
the main thing i think i'm inspired with is a desire to wake up into a more global sense of myself and the work i want to do, and the work i do.  Also, this has been very strengthening for myself as an artist, i really felt a different energy moving through me in that chaotic, seductive city.  i wonder if it has entered my body, or was it only on those hectic smiling streets?

well, as i say, pounds aren't rands or even dollars, so i sign out with love

nadia

 

Nadia Chaney's Blog Entry #6

October 5th 2006 (Audio Blog)

Click here to hear an interview with Nadia about her experience in South Africa.

 

Nadia Chaney's Blog Entry #7

October 7th 2006 (Audio Blog)

Click here to hear for Nadia's latest audio blog.

 

Nadia Chaney's Blog Entry #8

October 10th 2006 Direct from Nadia's e-journal

I to Eye Report

A Bizarre report on the Pioneers of Change Learning Journey in Johannesburg, 2006
By Nadia Chaney

It’s hard to imagine how to report on an experience that has entered me on a cellular level.  So I’ve used poetry and photographs, and divided this report into the following sections.  These may seem abstract, but it is a way of sorting the tidal wave of feelings and information that I now carry.  The trip was a storm, of emotion, confusion, ecstasy, excitement, and innovation.  These are personal reflections, from my sprinkling experience of a sprawling metropolis, gleaned in less than two weeks, of a guided and directed tour.  So here’s what you get.  It’s just a beginning, I have more dry notes, (all you people who want to meet the people you don’t know you want to meet), that will be interesting, plus I have some great photos, but first this needed to come out.

Body

It’s on the roads, I recognized
The nearly-new hat and shoes
Of the old regime
Empty car, one white driver
Empty car, one white
Swerving white taxi full of black
At the black intersections, under the robots
Selling newspapers and pens
On one white empty driver car

Roads are assumptions of hows
Like words, they connote importance
And dissect reality into anatomy
Of thought, but on the road you look forth and back
Not seeing the gaps, the alleys, the footpaths, the backyards, the laneways
The slang of change encroaching
The roots under the tar pushing, re-routing  

King Zorro’s arms waved his waist
At the window the wind whipping
His body a flag a new country of self
The character of change
Assume nothing royalty lurks
Expect nothing all bets are rules broken
Reinvention of the inroads of self
At the common of the bottom line

Years pass slowly under scars
Art, the iodine of the soul
Change, being come of age
Dances on the broken body
The darlings of carriage and diamond
An opportunity to spill the spoils

 

Mind

Ignite super consciousness alive.
Fire critical knowing institute quartered
Exed and remade
Crisscrossed flesh
Electric burns

What is beyond the edges of our educations
Where’d normal pass thorugh
Where does it regenerate
IDeas YouGod

Soul

We got to meet Hugh Masekela
Firelit, smokey and not too tired
To ignite one more chance
That change should push a flower
From its sprouting maw
Art for art’s sake is not enough,
Tell the stories of your poetry
The family of your songs
For the sake beyond the beautiful
Do it now and not half joy
Do not wait, do not bank against
Your dreams

 

Emotion

The burden of news
Who are you
Mind sex multi human
Trading culture of relationship
Conversation
And honesty revelation
True self and a sense of why
Offered freely in a circle

As sights of pain flashed by and was raw
Resonance pounding through flesh self
Here is the truth raked over
Reminding chiding and assigning you
To carry the burden of news

Who are you
What truth what use
To bring confused ideas loose
Onto people who may have thought it was

Through non verbal and non judgmental and critical
Release of stored energy
A hybrid monster of connection
Understanding
Is now
A
Global
Citizen

His name is Bountiful Inauguration

 

Darkness

On the first morning (I’d already had one
In Lenasia, world within worlds)
Perspective asked questions
What can you do for us?
But that question has two ends
My side pulls, what do you know of u s
Do you believe what you TV?
Because freedom is jealous
And delicate business like love
Ever after first impressions
Mark the slate clean of pre-tensions

Close call, we covered ours up
Hundreds of years of reservation Indians
At an intimate crossroads native pride
Numbers alive! “This will only sting a little,”
So, what can I do for you?
I can see the anguish of the world
And listen as the waterfalls
Of patience are sold to Metropolis
Listen. Listen. Listen.
Weaving this string here, but
Only guidance fluid freezes
The excruciating pace of free trade
There’s that word again
The sleight of hand outs

Light

And then there was

A getaway va

 

Female

Eyes all eyes I’m all my I’s in Joburg.  Why worry when anything can happen?
There’s a thrill of naiveté as if I have been born again in a reality photonegative and passion positive.
Freedom is razor sharp here, it has meaning as the dogma chases it’s tail.
The street corners crackle and gossip with garbage.  People sell anything at the robots, intersections, that is, traffic lights.  “Robot” is written on the street, like an admonition.
The way people dress is a relief.  Fashion can be a moment of something pretty of precious, or else it’s a flamboyant glamour. But people aren’t all wearing the same long stretch T-shirt and yoga pants.
Democracy, that dirty word, is so different when the majority has been suppressed, repressed, oppressed, pressed into the rich soil; a tiny mustard seed, ready to grow into a strong sheltering arbour, but which now is a twittering, clamouring sprout.

 

Male

The Constitution Hill has a dream
Has had many dreams
Has swallowed dreams and spit them up
It is open to the air
The breath of the night of the people of the city
It is open for business
The business of tact.ical gestures and
A strong force field of care, companionship, vigilance

 

Refuge

Greedy for that circle
Broken, unsymmetrical
Real as the great globe herself
Greedy for the enigmatic keys
And expectant cameras
The red dust and Tulani’s white taxi
My mouth strains
For the taste of an ideology
That steps on stilts
On a bridge rocking in the winds
Of gaudy injustice and heady refreshment
Of a city flashing a facelift
Whose tired eyes glitter
Contact, brilliance, beauty

The container, despite ringtones
And alarm clocks, was utterly
Love, eyes, smiles, ears, teeth,
Hands, jokes, quavers, ideas,
Confusions, breakfasts…
The deep care and commitments
Trickled down infallibly
until, “then there was one”
Blowing kisses from behind green bars

The light form the Vodacom tower
Shines green and blue
Into Mocheko’s apartment
The flower in the stone despite

 

Focus

That came like a flower out of the bloom
No longer new 
Used by the passage of time
As a staircase, deadheaded
Or almost, the gardener’s cleaver
Snapping open and shut in the slavering rhythm
Of the regret that comes like a forgotten brother
To death
To death

That came like a bee out of the bloom
Sated and giggling
Drunk and menacing
Hovering, trying to remember
how to get home sloppy and drooling
whose feet are sticky
whose mission is complete
whose fuzzy belly is fat and striped
and ducking the currents and teasing the children
with its painful sting

That came like a bubble out of the brew
Like a name, like a righteous idea
That disappeared unseen in a torrent
Of other brother bubbles
That was never special
But whose pop! Was part of the master’s escapist symphony
Complete and brief and born to rise
As the depths become the shallows

That came like a fortune out of the boon
Embarrassing to everyone
But the fortunate

 

Chaos

Changing with the inconsolable tides of time
Analysis fails,
I’m left with contradictions, paradox
And a fierce appreciation
The spirit of a city
One hand loose
From it’s pressing husk
The rushing taxis
And odd but familiar flocks
Of birds and people
Cars and barbed gates
Joburg. A garden of justice and hope
Behind a crumbling wall of keep out barbed wire

London. Two women are laughing
Are they aware of their skin?
Joburg.  Two women are laughing
Their skin is on fire
Burning away the longing and loathing between them

Without politics can I describe
A place, greentrees, bright flowers, red mud and high walls
A crawling jealous inner city
Obscenely sprawling suburbs
Lenasia cramped and oddly opulent
The black maids in Lenasia and Melville
It’s more shocking here than in India
Maybe you’re rooting more
For the fresher freedom
Maybe you want to see a white boy
Scrubbing her underwear
And you don’t know how to help it
Helpless
Maybe the people you want to interfere with
Don’t need you.  Except to witness
And exchange.  Duck!
There’s too much to lose

Change

Leadership from among, from within, is a leadership that allows the process to live, to emerge, to be fluid.

Centre

Immediacy and uncertainty
Peeling layers like skin
Around the subtle dynamo
Of the world as home

 

Click collage to view full size