What happened at the Cradle
A collaboration between Anna Christina Lorenzen, Jaco Van Den Heever, Dean Hutton and Alberta Whittle
What happens when you bring two people together with no clear idea of what to do or make, but there exists an anticipation that something will happen. When we met in Cape Town during 2012, we were Visiting Artists at Greatmore Studios. Often talking about our work and giving each other advice, an attraction grew towards the other person’s practice.
Eventually we began informally trying out ideas in the studios, taking photographs of each other in elaborate tableaux without a real plan of what would transpire. These images became a catalyst for us, where we recognised in ourselves the potential of these collaborations. Spending much of our time apart, these meetings have becoming increasingly significant to us. We sometimes live on separate continents and islands. Our joint practice, where we come together fresh again and in the moment is a chance to explore a broad range of themes, including but not restricted to the legacy of globalisation, hybrid identities and mythology.
Spurred on by the legacy of that initial collaboration in Cape Town, we decided to meet again at Fresh Milk Studios in Barbados, to see and make and do. Now, we find ourselves in Johannesburg at the Bag Factory. What do we do with this time? We knew we would collaborate but we never planned/articulated/drafted how this would work or in what form the collaboration would find its legs and what we would do with it. But we trusted.
This trust and commitment to work together and to bring together other creative practitioners, Jaco Van Den Heever, Dean Hutton and her dogs, has led to our most recent collaboration. An interesting tension comes about when you begin with a blank slate but a complete sense of optimism and a kind of faith. Working with a few carefully selected props and in specific settings, insists that our physicality and how we respond to each other becomes the only parameter, encouraging an immense trust into our fellow collaborators, without whom nothing would be possible.
On a clear Sunday afternoon, we travelled to the Cradle of Humankind and gave ourselves the space and the permission to be truly present with one another and to let things unfold. Responding to the lush and verdant landscape of the grounds bordering Nirox, we stumbled across a pair of dead turtles. Anna, remembering that turtles are monogamous, speculated that they died within hours or days of each other, losing their life to God knows what. They were our only witnesses, framing us, one on each side. We placed ourselves between them, swatting away swarms of flies, which feasted on their flesh. This turtle couple were blind witnesses to the mental and physical endurance that was that Sunday at Nirox, when we began making images and shapes, which altered the landscape and ourselves. Making a sacrifice of fruit and even bleeding nipples, we earthed ourselves and were physically, mentally and creatively present.
Our collaboration had witnesses in the form of the turtle couple but also guardians, Dean’s dogs. Comet and Luca became twin guardians of the collaboration. Often completely disinterested in the proceedings, yet always in our sight, they provided a psychic bridge between the everyday domestic scenes we know so well and the historical legacy we confronted by working in a space as loaded as the Cradle of Humankind.
That Sunday generated a sense of momentum, where we came together almost blindly. Our eyes are still open.
A collaboration between Anna Christina Lorenzen, Jaco Van Den Heever, Dean Hutton and Alberta Whittle
What happens when you bring two people together with no clear idea of what to do or make, but there exists an anticipation that something will happen. When we met in Cape Town during 2012, we were Visiting Artists at Greatmore Studios. Often talking about our work and giving each other advice, an attraction grew towards the other person’s practice.
Eventually we began informally trying out ideas in the studios, taking photographs of each other in elaborate tableaux without a real plan of what would transpire. These images became a catalyst for us, where we recognised in ourselves the potential of these collaborations. Spending much of our time apart, these meetings have becoming increasingly significant to us. We sometimes live on separate continents and islands. Our joint practice, where we come together fresh again and in the moment is a chance to explore a broad range of themes, including but not restricted to the legacy of globalisation, hybrid identities and mythology.
Spurred on by the legacy of that initial collaboration in Cape Town, we decided to meet again at Fresh Milk Studios in Barbados, to see and make and do. Now, we find ourselves in Johannesburg at the Bag Factory. What do we do with this time? We knew we would collaborate but we never planned/articulated/drafted how this would work or in what form the collaboration would find its legs and what we would do with it. But we trusted.
This trust and commitment to work together and to bring together other creative practitioners, Jaco Van Den Heever, Dean Hutton and her dogs, has led to our most recent collaboration. An interesting tension comes about when you begin with a blank slate but a complete sense of optimism and a kind of faith. Working with a few carefully selected props and in specific settings, insists that our physicality and how we respond to each other becomes the only parameter, encouraging an immense trust into our fellow collaborators, without whom nothing would be possible.
On a clear Sunday afternoon, we travelled to the Cradle of Humankind and gave ourselves the space and the permission to be truly present with one another and to let things unfold. Responding to the lush and verdant landscape of the grounds bordering Nirox, we stumbled across a pair of dead turtles. Anna, remembering that turtles are monogamous, speculated that they died within hours or days of each other, losing their life to God knows what. They were our only witnesses, framing us, one on each side. We placed ourselves between them, swatting away swarms of flies, which feasted on their flesh. This turtle couple were blind witnesses to the mental and physical endurance that was that Sunday at Nirox, when we began making images and shapes, which altered the landscape and ourselves. Making a sacrifice of fruit and even bleeding nipples, we earthed ourselves and were physically, mentally and creatively present.
Our collaboration had witnesses in the form of the turtle couple but also guardians, Dean’s dogs. Comet and Luca became twin guardians of the collaboration. Often completely disinterested in the proceedings, yet always in our sight, they provided a psychic bridge between the everyday domestic scenes we know so well and the historical legacy we confronted by working in a space as loaded as the Cradle of Humankind.
That Sunday generated a sense of momentum, where we came together almost blindly. Our eyes are still open.
