Photo by Nina Sobell 
Photo by Nina Sobell | Constellations (2000) |
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Livingstone, Zambia I went back to my home town of Livingstone, Zambia to take part in the local festival. I worked with a theatre group, Liwase, an extraordinary group of young people who travel to remote outposts of the country and make performances to persuade people that talking and openness about HIV Aids is the strongest weapon against it. We worked together with young children orphaned by the virus to make a piece for the festival. I asked each of them to approach the project from a very personal perspective and encouraged them to put tradition, custom and ritualised form aside. The improvisations and spontaneous actions and words led to the composition of powerful, moving songs. In the final performance I included my own memory as a child lying on my back at night looking up at the vast star-filled blackness, overwhelmed by the mix of goose-pimpled fear and excitement as the sensation of falling into the sky overcame me. I placed all the participants in configurations to form shapes of various constellations and gave them each a giant sparkler tied to a helium balloon. As they sang the songs they had composed, they lit the sparklers and released the balloons into the night sky where the sparklers momentarily merged with the stars. |
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