Anietie Ekanem
(GR)
The Lugubrious Game (a body revolts)
I have been filming myself rowing. This physical task draws attention to the corporeal in the Deleuzean sense. What is at stake is not the literal act of rowing, but the pure presence of the
body. The performance, then, comes to signify the singularity of the slave ship routes and the
physical and mental labour exerted. Slave labour and the displacement of the enslaved that
gave rise to a global Black diaspora are indivisible, as is represented by the rowing machine.
The act of rowing, not least engaging with generational trauma, eschews any suggestion of
alienated labour exerted by enslaved peoples and obscured by oppressors. Labor is present.
The supporting photographs are highly charged: at once through the act of documenting
physical strife that points outwardly towards preceding histories. And through the ephemerality
of performance suspended in a fragment of time. Whilst the ‘slave ship’ might have been
departed through my literal departure, this is merely ostensible: for the physical toll is something
I will continue to carry as the photographs document the strife. This should be noted, for it
mirrors our current state of racial aporia. Insofar as outwardly gratuitous acts of violence
(effected through enslavement, the commodification of human life, and colonial expansion) no
longer tangibly exist to some degree, vestiges of these histories remain present in systemic
disparities of wealth, policing, and quality of life.