The uncomfortable white man in the room with history..

 

"Is what dey had at .." the taxi man asked me. 

Driver from reliable taxi service. Car is old. Man looks old, cap, copper bangle on his left hand. Car not too far left of the road as bright lights seem to blind the man and car seem to move left then right.  

Driver talked as some do, he used to work in the printing industry. 

I explained that it was a gathering, a British photographer doing something with old time photo processing plates and so. Taxi man said he would have liked to see that.  

Truth was, I could not really explain what dey had because I do not know the technical language of photography. or Art. But I like going to things I know nothing about to push my boundaries.

Uncomfortable white man

The British photographer is white, a film maker doing photography.  

Working collaboratively with a Black woman descended from Guyana. They share the same surname.

Mal Woolford and Charlotte Woolford live in the same neighbourhood in the UK , their children had attended the same schools.

Mal Woolford learned that one of his ancestors had come to Barbados in the 1700s. 'Not someone who made lots of money or one of the big names.. ".  

He found records of another ancestor who had households with enslaved Africans in Barbados and  British Guiana now Guyana (or Exxon Guyana depending on who you ask)

Charlotte Woolford and Mal Woolford have worked on a photography project, using old time and other processing techniques to show connections across space and time. Mal Woolford has had to discomfort himself as he comes to terms with his ancestors' brutality. 

Charlotte Woolford talks about the work done, learning about 'wet collodion processing" and their co-creation process. In this project, the photographed subject is involved in the choices.  

One of the photographers in the audience tells me afterwards '' kind of like participatory research.. "

Mal Woolford positions himself in one of the daguerreotype images, stripped above the waist, like the enslaved men who were forced to pose in pictures for the 1850 'natural scientist' from Harvard University, Louis Aggasiz. 

I am not sure what the point is though, because Mal Woolford is a willing subject here , and in our world there might be unwilling subjects still in other places like prisons and so who are photographed.

The image on the screen though, in the room, is stark.

Room with history

Mal Woolford shares that he has read Dionne Brand and Audre Lorde.  

He quotes from Dionne Brand' The Map of No Return: Notes of Belonging in two points in his presentation.

"One enters a room and history follows; one enters a room and history precedes. 

and then "

History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives." 

The second quote guides a project in which Charlotte Woolford and Mal Woolford

I download the book from the site to understand the context of the quote, but some things are above my head. I will go back though to read slowly.

The room though, when I came in.. small gathering, colourful paintings on the wall.  First thing I do instinctively in any gathering is check how many coolie people and how many black people.. History. 

Mixed group.  Front seat is empty and I think lord, no.. I don't like to sit in the front seat.. 

Something about the uncomfortable white man in this room, talking about decolonising in the colonial building which once housed one of the new plantation masters after Republic.

Nice discussions.  Imagination and possibilities. I had been in the archives in the day and there was this weirdness of coming back to the archives through Charlotte Woolford and Mal Woolford's labour with explosive solutions and glass plates and so on.

My clumsy labour with free AI tools is not the same.

Blackout comes. 

History as the PPP and the PNC continue to trade insults about the electricity problems in Guyana which are connected to the dysfunctional history. Remembering the conversation that GPL has a lot of corrupt practices which are beyond imagination and that there are some people who actually thrive in the dysfunction of blackouts etc (more solar and generators and so to sell? ) like how war is more profitable.

One photographer though has some of his lights, so there are lights, for a moment , and I could imagine how it must have been when planning rebellions in the dark.

One of the organiser explains that the gathering is 'unofficial'. 

Another person tells me quietly, yep.. no permission was received from the new plantation master for the gathering.

So this interesting discussion about the white man, discomforting himself to heal from the history of exploitation, is subversive in a way, in a room in a building in a country where new forms of exploitation are justified.