Could you tell us what drew you towards this collection and how you started to navigate the early stages of your research?
In 2016 I became interested in cotton as a plantation crop, which I discovered had been imposed by the Belgians on Congolese farmers at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This forcibly produced cotton was exported and sold in Europe. As I studied the different aspects of cotton production in the Congo, I began to better understand the political and economic dynamics at play. Therefore, it was only natural that I would choose AN.2016.7 (consisting of photos, drawings, maps, and notes). The collection centres upon a man working for a Dutch import-export company, active in the agricultural environment.
Have you worked with archival material before and, if so, could you comment on the importance of responding to historical records within your practice?
I have worked on several similar projects. One that particularly comes to mind was related to the figure of Giuseppe Di Vittorio, whose collection is archived and preserved in Rome and Puglia. Di Vittorio was the founding father of the Italian General Confederation of Labour, the largest Italian labour union, and at his death in the 1950s he was also president of the World Federation of Labour Unions. The material contained in Di Vittorio’s archive describes the struggle of southern Italian farmers – of whom the young Di Vittorio was the leader – against the big landowners. Ironically, now that these farmers have become small landowners, they themselves can be found exploiting foreign labour. Several anecdotes from the Di Vittorio archive were included in my film Tre Titoli.
In 2011 I created The Tools’ Dance, a performance in three acts (curated by Martina Angelotti and Careof di Milano) based on this archive of agricultural movements. In general, historical events have always seemed to me to resemble a sort of archive, useful for constructing a dialogue and generating artistic-performative interpretations.
In 2017 you were nominated for the Visible Award for your project Contraintre, which brought agriculture and performance together. Does the Saudade project expand on the themes explored in Contraintre?
I am grateful to the Expatriate Archive Centre and Natalie McIlroy for the invitation and the opportunity to work with archive AN.2016.7. Based on my work with this collection, my idea is to construct a performance with my newborn transnational company, Contraintre. My goal is to develop this company and make it sustainable in terms of costs and staging, so that we will be able to reprise previous productions as well as perform those we have planned for the future. The themes of colonialism and decolonialism are extremely delicate and perhaps too often addressed, but I would also say they are exciting because they tell us so much about our Western nature and past. What I would like to do with this performance is to overcome the division between the black body and the white body through the birth of a third body, the son of the two protagonists.
Site specificity is integral to both the research and final outcomes of your work. How have you approached this project in which the ‘site’ is an archive?
The archive is the root of the project. However, the books written by the Dutch author of AN.2016.7 are the true site, the site we are illuminating and translating – beginning with the Dutch language in which the books are written – to arrive at a contemporary performance through which we would like to tell this story.
Your final piece will be a performance during the launch of this book. Could you explain the components and storyline of the performance?
I worked with Fred van den Hoek to extrapolate the dialogue between the two protagonists of Pioneers of Chicongo. ‘Chicongo’ is the Dutch trader who has come to the Belgian Congo to manage agricultural enterprises in service of a Dutch import-export company. Mulèkedi is a 15-year-old concubine whom Chicongo buys as a slave and who lives with him for several years. The book tells the story of their love, which culminates in her pregnancy.
The dialogues that we have translated into English are nothing more than the dramatic skeleton of the book, which I have used as the structure of the performance. In addition, the entire photographic archive of AN.2016.7 served as a base for the preparatory design, the scenery and the costumes of the two protagonists whom we intend to bring to life.
Are there any strategies or themes developed during the Saudade project that you are keen to take forward into future works?
I plan to develop other performances with the same operating method. We will wait until the end of the project to decide which elements to repeat in future research environments.