Episode 15 – Berni Searle

00:00:01: Art has a role to play.

00:00:04: It can provoke, it can suggest...it can invoke and it has the role of playing alongside other processes.

00:00:14: but without some of those other processes I don't think that art alone could change the world.

00:00:19: Says Bernie Searle who i met for another episode of Gallery Weekend Berlin The Art Podcast.

00:00:26: My name is Inuma Okoro, and I'm delighted to be speaking with South African artist Bernie Saul who's based in Cape

00:00:33: Town.

00:00:34: Her mixed media work uses lens-based media digital video film and sculptural practice To consider how narratives are created sustained and questioned through history identity memory in place though her work is grounded in the legacy of colonialism and, in particular, apartheid and post-apartheid histories of South Africa.

00:00:57: She speaks to universal themes that can open up questions or reflections for people from a variety of contexts and cultures—to consider mutable identities and layered

00:01:09: histories.".

00:01:10: But welcome to Gallery Weekend Berlin Podcasts!

00:01:12: It's great to have you.

00:01:14: Thank You.

00:01:15: What do you think was the biggest stereotype about Berlin?

00:01:19: And is it true?

00:01:22: Okay, I've been to Berlin a few times and It's always being in relation to various exhibitions.

00:01:33: I think...I don't know if you can call it a stereotype but it certainly has a reputation for being A kind of edgy autistic Kind-of city pool for artists to come and live there, work and show this.

00:01:53: I think probably it's like a buzzing autistic city not without complexities but that is what my impression of Berlin is certainly in my experiences when i was there particularly in Berlin.

00:02:13: Excellent.

00:02:14: Well, I definitely think there's some truth to that stereotype.

00:02:17: What is your favorite thing about Berlin?

00:02:22: I Think it's the diversity.

00:02:25: For me and in my again i speak from our encounters with being in Berlin Is the diversity of both people And The various expressions autistic expressions and Experimentations and often quite quite cutting edge and different or varied work.

00:02:48: So for me that is a, it's something that kind of attracts me to a city like Berlin.

00:02:55: I wouldn't mind living there if i could.

00:02:58: Hmm

00:02:59: seed planting thanks Bernie what's one piece of art that you can stop thinking about?

00:03:07: So I mean, that's a difficult one off the top of my head because i think there are probably quite a few artistic works that I think all from time to time.

00:03:22: And...I'm going to say an artwork very simple while simply in a sense it doesn't have many components but so effective is peace by Marina Abramovic on a horse and holding a white flag, which kind of blows in the wind.

00:03:51: And it is for me... It's just an economy of means and that way in which he was able to evoke its either gesture of surrender or a gesture going forward challenging.

00:04:07: It incorporates both aspects, I think.

00:04:11: And again like with an economy of means there are three elements it's her the flag and the horse in a pasture.

00:04:20: uh...and

00:04:22: you know it has both a stillness but a provocativeness.

00:04:26: i think that makes me intrigued by the image and intention of an artist.

00:04:36: What a thoughtful answer, Bernie!

00:04:39: And actually that's quite interesting response because then economy means also can be spoken about your work how you challenge in very seemingly simple ways.

00:04:51: but we all know things appear most simpler are often the most layered or complex.

00:04:57: so thats wonderful segue into our conversation today.

00:05:00: thankyou for those answers.

00:05:02: I did note that we have one particular thing in common.

00:05:05: Well, we have a few things but one really particular thing is... We were both chivitalians!

00:05:09: We are both at Chivotella!

00:05:12: Me?

00:05:13: A bit more recent but i thought oh that's lovely-we can talk about the castle But you've been making work for a long time Bernie and received notable recognition for it.

00:05:22: And um..I would like to just know some of those things.

00:05:26: In nineteen ninety eight she was given UNESCO prize by International Art Critics Association at the Seventh International Cairo Biennale.

00:05:35: In two thousand, you participated in Descartes and received the Minister of Culture Award.

00:05:42: .In twenty fourteen ,you were an esteemed fellow of the Rockefeller Bellagio Creative Arts

00:05:47: Fellowship.".

00:05:49: And those are just a few examples!

00:05:52: Next month you will be showing here in Berlin at PSM before you go on to also show at the Venice Biennali which This is quite a special time given that it's in minor keys conceived by Koyokuyo, and we will talk more about that.

00:06:09: But you will be showing in I believe its diaspora, dissonance in minor.

00:06:14: F-you're one of the guest artists.

00:06:16: this is really exciting!

00:06:17: And we'll get to that.

00:06:18: but let's go back a bit first especially for our audience.

00:06:22: i did mention earlier that there is a universality to the themes in your work.

00:06:27: You present identity as fluid layered shaped by history, culture and perception.

00:06:36: And you often use your own body as a point of

00:06:38: departure.".

00:06:41: I think that this invites viewers to consider the ways that identities are always in process both in the sense what is trying to shape those identities and also how we ourselves are always.

00:06:58: And when you first began making, he began with a sculptural practice.

00:07:08: It was really through that medium as I understand it very early in your career that you begin to explore what's first started with ideas of nationhood and nationalism?

00:07:19: Yet something that i find interesting is somehow um... That form didn't seem expansive enough To hold your own personal experiences around narratives of identity including as a woman classified.

00:07:35: We're all classified in so many ways, aren't we?

00:07:37: But you have the particular stake in this being in South Africa and I'm wondering if could just set the stage for our listeners And maybe take us back to ground.

00:07:47: listen how you came think about your current themes...and the shift of mediums.

00:07:53: You are right!

00:07:57: I was exposed to when i was studying at the Micaely School of Fine Art, which is where now.

00:08:09: And

00:08:10: I found

00:08:11: sculpture as much as I enjoyed um The tactility Of working with certain materials.

00:08:20: I've found sculpture a bit limited in its kind of process That often that it often involves and at that stage It included making molds and making positives.

00:08:35: And then casting, it was such a long process... Me sometimes didn't have the immediacy of human body or figure in way that was direct.

00:09:02: It always somewhat removed from the physical bodily experience of an individual and I wanted really to find something, find a way actually only happened after I'd left the art school more directly Way and a more organic way to what in terms of what it was.

00:09:29: I wanted to express.

00:09:32: photography Was away for me to be able to do that And we all know that photographs do lie, and they're not necessarily a reflection or reality but It does have an ability to communicate quite directly.

00:09:52: Again, I would say with an economy of means not a long process but it's ability to capture almost instantly a particular gesture or idea.

00:10:09: So that was one of the reasons I started working with photography.

00:10:16: Of course, there are a number interesting things about photography in terms my ideas and what i'm interested in.

00:10:23: role of photography In The way People have been various people had been captured Photographically ethnography and that particular history of representation, which I was also interested in.

00:10:40: One of the works i wanted to start with...to really deepen what you're sharing with us is your Color Me series!

00:10:47: You know?You talk about the power of photography to almost immediately offer a strong gesture.

00:10:55: Color Me series from nineteen ninety-eight to two thousand.

00:11:04: that's such a for me like a poignant example of How you use your body, you know if we've just been talking.

00:11:11: You've just Been sharing about how sculpture didn't seem.

00:11:14: I'm gonna Use the words sort have embodied enough To express what you were What?

00:11:19: Your but you continue to work on and in your color me series where you Have these photographs Where you sort of create it when you don't sort of you do create a second skin by covering your body in these spices, right?

00:11:32: Turmeric, paprika ground cloves, pea flour to symbolize the simplistic racial classifications.

00:11:41: Some of them.

00:11:43: and maybe using that example we can continue this conversation about The themes of the work that you're continually working through And how you use your body to deconstruct these colonial legacies and narratives around the ideation classification and commodification of, I want to say black bodies but all bodies really.

00:12:06: In different ways gendered bodies as well.

00:12:10: I think

00:12:10: you've touched on very eloquently some of the aspects that i'm interested in And The Colomy series has a reference to particular racial classifications under apartheid, but it was also an attempt to go beyond that and present myself in colours of my own making.

00:12:41: as a way to challenge those impositions and categorizations.

00:12:48: It was also a reference to aspects of my heritage, my maternal great-grandfathers came from Saudi Arabia and Mauritius so we now.

00:13:01: this is not to say that we eat curries all the time I always just have to cry.

00:13:07: Okay But

00:13:08: there's a particular way of making food that has definitely been passed down from generation to generation.

00:13:16: And I wondered what aspects actually connected me where it is coming from, and one of the aspects was food.

00:13:28: so both in The Colour Me series we are used spices and in other related works to that series where I use flour, um...and you know way replicate not replicate but point to the process of making a bread in a particular way is the way that we would make rooties.

00:13:52: And it's quite particular!

00:13:54: It comes from somewhere because It comes from my mother, it comes from a grandfather and it comes form great-grandfather.

00:14:05: So there's the aspects of heritage also relating to the Calamity series through that early body award.

00:14:12: I think that even though...I would have made this point earlier but it's great, we were able to make it in relation to a specific work.

00:14:21: But with my sculptural background i don't think ever kind of lost the sensibility and affinities worth materiality.

00:14:35: The materials themselves

00:14:43: have

00:14:44: to transform the body in very interesting ways.

00:14:48: I

00:14:49: am really taken by your pointing out how essential the materials are and the materiality, not just dressing a body but addressing identities as i think about it.

00:15:04: that way I love that you share with, really remind us.

00:15:08: That the color series is also about claiming heritage and not just about isn't how i understood it?

00:15:17: Not just about racial classification because what so often happens when we're having discussions around these themes... What's so often gets lost are some of the positive things about having a varied background whether or not that very background regardless.

00:15:35: The fact, I think is also we have there's a beauty to our heritage at the end of day.

00:15:40: And when you were sharing about on your Saudi heritage and...I don't know!

00:15:48: Just keep thinking again what a terror?

00:15:51: What danger it was to classify as in how much we're still paying consequences for that racial classification system On so many levels, obviously.

00:16:04: But I'm just thinking in the grand level of shared humanity.

00:16:07: and when i begin to think about shared humanity... ...I am thinking about collective care About recognition In beautiful ways.

00:16:16: So anytime we're exploring The negative aspects Somewhere within that there's also a positive Even if it is hard to extricate.

00:16:26: Do you agree?

00:16:27: What do

00:16:28: You Think?

00:16:29: There is a tendency to sometimes only see, let's say we're talking about series now in terms of these impositions of identities.

00:16:41: It has that reference.

00:16:43: it's more nuanced than just that and I think makes connections with experiences here and experiences elsewhere.

00:16:57: Tracing one's heritage to these different countries, including European countries in my case is also to make connections between this place and other places in the world.

00:17:11: This space and other experiences in other contexts and locations... And I think it just quite visually imaginative.

00:17:24: It also operates in the realm of imagination because one can read it, but not entirely light-hearted

00:17:36: playfulness.".

00:17:37: What is so interesting with this Color Me series?

00:17:41: when I first saw it took me back to the spice trade route India, China and as you were sharing as well other parts of the continents which speaks to again not just materiality of things but how the body also becomes a material.

00:18:00: The body becomes a commodity in the process?

00:18:02: Exactly!

00:18:03: I want to move us from the Color Me series but continue to use it as a segue into your other work because thinking about your series the more recent sugar girls, all these works that I wish we can go into more descriptive detail about.

00:18:20: But essentially you're approaching one element of this is your considering their relationship between visibility and invisibility in your work.

00:18:30: how do you decide what to reveal versus what obscure?

00:18:34: Yeah i mean certainly the idea of appearing and disappearing being there.

00:18:41: foregrounding and background levels of opacity in a way is part one of the ways which I am able to control how.

00:18:54: The image on myself is viewed.

00:18:58: so it has that you know, gives me an opportunity play with perception in away in which i have also a degree of agency.

00:19:08: So in some cases I use that agency quite obviously, you know looking back or staring directly at the viewer and brings into play who's looking whose visible?

00:19:19: And how?

00:19:20: what do you see when you see me?

00:19:22: so visibility is certainly something is very much connected and interconnected in the works that I make, as you mentioned.

00:19:33: a few examples.

00:19:34: But equally invisibility—the fact people are not seen they are diminished.

00:19:51: So for example, you know if we talk about ethnography and photography and the way in which ethnographic portrayals of people who argument say from parts of Africa were presented is a it presents in a particular way that obscures and actually subjugates what Yeah, as much as revealing is important part of the work.

00:20:24: The part about what can happen when or by which processes do people also become invisible?

00:20:33: Or subjugated in many cases also obliterated

00:20:38: Which seems like a lot.

00:20:41: that's happening with your sugar girl series where you're looking at sort of the lost histories around the waterfront space, of Zeitmokka Museum and those communities that were for lack a better word pushed out.

00:21:00: And yet in this series we are making these big self-portraits of yourself.

00:21:08: That to me is also taking up space.

00:21:11: Yes, and well I mean i think the sugar girls definitely is playing with aspects of revealing and concealing.

00:21:20: Yeah because it was subject matter And its ideas for this work originated while he's doing a residency at Zeitz Mokka The location of Zeitz mokka in the port or in the dock area.

00:21:34: This part an area in Cape Town that has changed quite drastically, relatively short space of time.

00:21:45: And playing with the idea of voyeurism as well on this particular series and again looking out from behind a kind of veil whether it is... As in Le Maintaveuse de Veille to obscure the body.

00:22:06: it's candy floss, which is a difference to sugar and sugar girls.

00:22:14: But also concealing because the you know what I'm talking about is also veiled in a lot of taboo And many people don't actually talk about these aspects.

00:22:31: so It is quite an opaque area to kind of try make work a bar.

00:22:37: So the candy floss creates different levels of opaqueness and transparency, I think that actually is what i play with in lot my other works as

00:22:49: well.".

00:22:53: I don't know, step in is the word to be a place marker of other bodies and other experiences.

00:23:11: And when i think about this...I think about how all of our bodies-in some way even the bodies of the colonizers carry history and memory?

00:23:19: So as I was looking at some of your works like..i was looking it's one that was collected by The Manchester Art Gallery One Of The Pieces.

00:23:25: It Was In The Wake Up The piece you did About The Mine Workers The Miners.

00:23:33: you are using your body in this way as a place marker for the victims of The Marikana Massacre.

00:23:39: So I'm thinking about that, is one example.

00:23:42: then also thinkin' bout one of ur early films i think from two thousand and five about to forget where u're literally using images ove bodies in ur family.

00:23:52: how do yu decide were u going t factor into ur lived experience?

00:23:56: Into elements of ur work versus using ur body as a space marker?

00:24:02: Do you think the body can function as a more truthful archive than more institutional histories?

00:24:07: Because whichever way your choosing, which ever one you're doing in two examples I've given.

00:24:12: You are still centering the body is place of archival work.

00:24:17: Yes i mean that's absolutely go either way.

00:24:20: but... ...I do thing even if the body The references, for example the in wake of which is a work that I spoke about.

00:24:34: Which has a direct reference to the Maracana massacre and i'm using my body but particularly a female body.

00:24:45: so it's referencing the videos...the people who are left behind after the massacre.

00:24:54: So the aspects of my identity that come into play in visual itself, even if the reference is to a particular historical event.

00:25:07: Similarly about To Forget series which I use silhouettes or family members from photographs gradually bleed into the water.

00:25:22: There is a more direct reference to me, but my body is not there.

00:25:27: so I think one can talk about this figure generally and what it can symbolize in different works.

00:25:33: And sometimes I am a stand-in for, but it's...I believe its always somehow connected even if is the most tentative or the most obscure way.

00:25:45: so for example Sugar Girls.

00:25:47: i could never really talk about the experience of what it would have been to work with locally called The Docs never really experienced that.

00:26:00: I can't talk for anybody else's experience of that, but i can talk to aspects of dislocation in place down and the ways in which people have been driven further and farther away from the city center .

00:26:15: That is very much part of my experiences.

00:26:17: so i think these overlapping strands where one cannot like simply talk on behalf or at the same time make connections between different scenarios or different events and experiences, how they might connect with one's own experience of place.

00:26:41: Which is really powerful because it is a reminder about how we're all implicated in some way.

00:26:49: Implicated?

00:26:50: Not necessarily just... We often use that word to to think about negatively, you know in some sort of guilty way but I don't mean it that way.

00:26:59: All these histories are interwoven and the past continues to come to the

00:27:03: present.".

00:27:04: And i think about this just how your body as a female body is representing the widows?

00:27:15: What i love about that example is... It pushes me to continue to think about, again it's taking me back the sense of collective humanity.

00:27:28: Even on a level just thinking how this body mine enumas as black female... As soon you said what did with the widows something in is stirred right?

00:27:40: And I don't even have know why that is.

00:27:43: but there are some connection and i think part of art does reminds us of our humanity, but also reminds this of our interwoven histories even in things that took place perhaps before we were born.

00:27:59: Perhaps on another continent or and I love this about your work because again it's taking me back to one of the first things i said at the beginning up...the universal themes of it!

00:28:07: But through these particularities right?

00:28:09: These particular stories.

00:28:11: so bearing that in mind In The Years Of Your Practice You know, and as the world has continued.

00:28:17: And we know all of things that are happening now have your perspectives shifted or evolved around engaging such legacies as The Colonial Legacy Or apartheid and post-apartheid?

00:28:29: Maybe another way to put this is what interrogations have changed or expanded for you?

00:28:33: Because I imagine they've expanded more so than my thoughts because All these whether We call it whatever we choose To name It everything you've been working on for a couple of decades are still relevant today.

00:28:46: Absolutely, I think in terms of the ideas and experiences that i've had continue to form The basis Of how I see what is happening In the world Today.

00:29:03: So as traumatic As A system of apartheid was For example having experienced that, having lived through it.

00:29:15: There were certain ways in which I as a young person growing up questioned what was happening around me and at the core of that So many systems social and political systems And my understanding of that we called it at the time consciousness about raising consciousness.

00:29:46: This is what this struggle was about in South Africa raising consciousness Of people to realize that the power has been taken away from you.

00:29:54: What are what is the nature of this power and how it manages to sustain itself in a particular way.

00:30:05: And I think that has actually been a lens through which i try to understand experiences and formative years might have been, I think there's an underlying inquiry into power.

00:30:27: Into ways in which it continues to be enforced on so many different levels in our lives... ...and in so many other ways in different places.

00:30:37: but i think that the connection between all of this is as traumatic you know, formative years might have been.

00:30:45: It's given me a solid basis to be critical of what is happening around

00:30:49: me.".

00:30:49: Do

00:30:49: you think that art can actively repair historical wounds?

00:30:54: I think it has the ability to articulate some... well draw out some of what might be problematic let say in terms I don't think it can actually.

00:31:13: I think that happens on a level of broader political engagement and challenging an organization, having said that i think there is also so much more to our being in the world than constantly feeling like one has to challenge Where is the space, for example to reflect on the beauty or reflect on poetics?

00:31:50: Or aspects that also make us human.

00:31:56: And I think thats where art has a role to play.

00:32:00: It can provoke it can suggest it can invoke and have a role of playing alongside other processes But without some of those other processes, I don't think that art alone can change the world.

00:32:16: I'm wondering if there have been particular writers or thinkers or artists who somehow walked alongside you imaginatively as you've thought and continued to explore these themes and issues?

00:32:30: Let's say power for example...

00:32:32: Oh!

00:32:32: There are so many examples from people like me besides so many contemporaries in South Africa, you know.

00:32:41: I think it may be as we always draw from each other and i think particularly in terms of the south african context that is which are kind of pointed to earlier.

00:32:54: there's a criticality In which were able to see the world and express-

00:33:00: I can't help thinking about the Biennale thats coming up next month Koyo's conception of it and you participating in it.

00:33:09: At first, I'd love to give your moment to share whatever you would like in regard to the work and memory of Koyo but also how you're thinking about this time?

00:33:18: And what this Biennale represents and How You're Hoping Your Work Will Speak Into This ?

00:33:23: I think that Koyo vision for this biennale is absolutely pertinent To The Moment That We Living In as you mentioned called in minor keys looking at the periphery and the peripheral voices in a moment where there's so much obliteration, and destruction of voices from the periphery.

00:33:45: I see that as being one of the really significant aspects of this particular iteration of The Biennale & Coyo's vision for it.

00:33:57: i think of course the unexpected loss has in some ways actually brought people together, to work together.

00:34:10: To realize the Biennale and to put in place her vision for The Biennala.

00:34:18: nonetheless I think artists themselves also have found points around which to rally And i think that these peripheral voices which are not necessarily unheard, they've literally been drowned and the word I used earlier on was obliterated is makes it so much more significant.

00:34:54: for this Biennale is what makes it significant.

00:34:58: Having been in one of the earlier Biennales, two thousand and one in Venice In a show which was called Authentic Eccentric at that point there were very few artists from Africa or African diaspora represented in the curated shows Or even in The Pavilions Of The Biennala And I think that this exhibition is able to fill in and represent, make visible voices which are still regarded as somewhat particular role.

00:35:40: My question's what role do you think ritual whether cultural or political?

00:35:46: or a personal ritual plays in meaning making, and maybe part of that meaning-making is even a way also exploring beauty poetics as well the less charming things.

00:36:00: And identity formation!

00:36:01: I think that Inuma...I think you are bringing up these aspects for conversation.. I think your articulation aspects that come to play in the work is very pertinent.

00:36:23: I mean, I think you are saying already what it's like trying to do with my work which as when we spoke about ritual and not an aspect mentioned so far But it is certainly this repetitive action in a piece like Snow White, In which I am evoking the process of making Ruti but evoking something much more than that.

00:36:58: Because its not little demonstration.

00:37:02: Well, this is how you make something.

00:37:05: But it also has the ability... I think when you invoke something, It has that ability to be interpreted in so many different ways and In some ways That i think The artist might not even necessarily Be aware of.

00:37:22: because And i always like To talk about This Snow White piece in which I used flower as I mentioned you know, I shake it off me and kind of transform into this piece of dough.

00:37:37: But i had an opening in New York which was scheduled at the time of nine eleven And it went ahead.

00:37:45: Well, I mean...I didn't travel to the show for opening but we opened at nonetheless this kind of symbolic opening.

00:37:52: that work was there already and they were images of those flower falling on me!

00:37:58: There are people who came here because their immediate experiences saw completely as Ash surrounded New York City for so many days after had kind of transform people into these ghost-like images and having to shake that off, get some out to terms with what had just happened.

00:38:28: So a totally different context but the ability in this case is the flower working through processing.

00:38:39: And there was no end.

00:38:42: particular piece was just reconstituting, re-breaking up, scattering and then reconstituding a few times until you know...a kind of measure of exhaustion.

00:38:57: But that stood and evoked..and could invoke so many other experiences!

00:39:04: So I do think It's like a form of meditation.

00:39:11: And it is also quiet with only one sound in that video which was the water dropping down, contemplative.

00:39:17: I do think this aspect of contemplativeness comes out from my video works and i think its important because where being quiet something at pace That is slow.

00:39:35: Yes, it's contemplated the silence It's considered.

00:39:40: and what happens at least as a viewer What happens when I am Engaged whether looking at a still or looking in video Is first thing about time?

00:39:50: A little differently than i think About the interplay between Time The body but time does to the body.

00:40:00: How time is the space in which identities are created, sustained negotiated?

00:40:05: And within all this of course I can't think about with your work.

00:40:09: When i'm thinking about these things im also thinking about political systems and it's so fascinating to me that you connect well bring up the fact that piece was showing after nine eleven because there many thing we could say about um... The container for what Nine Eleven happened.

00:40:28: everything followed But part of that was also about narratives of identity, I believe.

00:40:37: As far as things went into the condition for something like this to happen.

00:40:43: and what happened after narrative identities of certain people?

00:40:49: Yes it's all in mesh not just work but certainly in perceptions around And

00:40:59: we'll continue to transpire in different ways and even now.

00:41:04: You know, narrative identities?

00:41:06: Yeah if I could maybe use this particular point of our conversation so talk about the work that i'm going to show in Venus.

00:41:16: it's called Interlaced and I mentioned this particularly in relation with what you referred of identities and these peripheral identities that continue to be monitored, legislated, curtailed controlled.

00:41:35: It's called interlaced and it was shot in Belgium And I'm wearing a piece of lace with gold hands.

00:41:45: so the gold hand relates when people didn't, whose limbs were severed.

00:42:00: When they did not bring in the quotas that was required of them.

00:42:06: but at that time being in Belgium and other parts of Europe as well The banning of the burqa was up for legislation In many European countries.

00:42:26: So when I put on this veil and kind of present myself in a way petitioning the position all.

00:42:36: The women, it does bring up what again?

00:42:40: I'm going to use your phrase narratives or these identities in world that has become so polarized.

00:42:49: It's frighteningly so in our present moment.

00:42:53: And I think that whether it is snow, work like Snow White or Interlaced these narratives drew... These voices all these petitions do kind of surface and the sound for The Peace Interlased was composed by a local South African musician and is based on the Muslim call to prayer.

00:43:20: And it was played through the bell towers in the city of Bruges, and in the town square.

00:43:28: The Anan or called to pray musically... It's kind-of in minor keys.

00:43:38: Somewhat different sounds different to the Western ear.

00:43:45: It creates this dissonance in a way, while I call it the productive dissonances because that does bring into play experiences and voices of people on the peripheries.

00:44:15: of the moment.

00:44:17: I think it goes back to your earlier point in our conversation where you were asking me, so how have things changed?

00:44:23: or...

00:44:25: How's your interrogation expanded?

00:44:27: Yes

00:44:29: and I was saying trying say that there is a kind the expression, might find expression in different forms at different times.

00:44:50: I think there's an underlying inquiry somehow connects to works that are

00:44:56: true.".

00:44:56: I think we will all be excited to see interlaced during the run of BNLA for those several months it is on and immediately again how you're able blend whether subconsciously or in our faces.

00:45:11: but this mix meditation and contemplation, and also pain.

00:45:16: And trauma!

00:45:17: And these histories... So whether you're doing it through silent spaces in Snow White or through referencing the call to prayer while also showing these gold hands that like you said we know what represents I keep thinking of a book that changed so much for me when i read about twenty years ago King Leopold's Ghost.

00:45:39: And I think what that invites us to do, whether we respond to that invitation or not is allow ourselves to sit with it.

00:45:46: It's sort of a meditative contemplative state to sit in the pain and trauma of human history That plays out so many ways and continues play-out.

00:45:55: Also questioning where are we standing too?

00:45:58: I wonder if there anything else you feel like you'd want me say?

00:46:02: You know...I speak through my work more particularly than i can possibly say in words.

00:46:12: I'd like to thank you for taking the time because we haven't had a pre-conversation, this is our first conversation and it's clear that you have taken the time.

00:46:27: look at some of your work the questions that you've posed, you've processed I think a lot in terms of some aspects of work and what it is grappling with.

00:46:43: It's trying to say some of the complexities around that.

00:46:49: so i want thank for your time not just doing this conversation but investing time in trying to find out about the work because of course these things take time reflecting on it, you know and being able too.

00:47:09: In your own mind kind of have a sense of what is we talk about?

00:47:15: And what will lift our conversation.

00:47:25: touched by that, so thank you.

00:47:27: So Thank You for making your work and being committed to the process!

00:47:31: And I am very excited to see Your Work in Venice... ...and also To See Your Work In Berlin at PSM next

00:47:37: month!!

00:47:38: So all our listeners if you pass through Berlin make sure you go The PSM Gallery.. ..And If You Pass Through Venice Make Sure You Go See Bernie's Work Or Even Just Online just Make SureYouSeeItSomehow What Is Your Favorite Tool?

00:47:56: My hands?

00:47:56: What

00:47:57: is the last lesson you learned?

00:48:00: I think we learn lessons all of time.

00:48:04: That's a difficult one, i'm gonna get back to on that.

00:48:07: what are you curious about right now?

00:48:09: oh!

00:48:10: I am curious how... ...I am going make work.

00:48:16: they can possibly reflect.. ..on what it is that were witnessing in the world.

00:48:24: One doesn't have words for it necessarily.

00:48:26: and then how does one give expression to what is we are seeing, evolving right before our eyes?

00:48:37: And so maybe curious as not but I... It's something that is on my mind.

00:48:52: reflect on what we are experiencing.

00:48:56: And of course it is a difficult honor, but something needs to be said and created somehow makes space for the contemplation

00:49:21: and wishing you a bountiful experience in Venice, even with the weight of what your presenting.

00:49:29: Thank You so

00:49:29: much!