Mafolofolo
Mafolofolo: a place of recovery, emerges from five years of our research in the northern part of South Africa. Our research has sought to understand the multiple cycles of loss and subsequent cycles of return related to the land. We are concerned with the deep and enduring relationships with the land that remain, despite the long durée of South Africa’s turbulent and destabilizing existence. What we take from the particular history of this place is the potential to seek intimacy, spiritual security, and interdependence with the land and more-than-human life. Through it, we encounter how we might repair ourselves and the lands from which we find sustenance.
Mafolofolo is a site of grieving and a place of contemplation, but also an offering of strategies for recovery. The cycle of displacement and return is present in the historical tracking in the floor installation and in the sound that references popular African resistance songs for liberation, particularly of the land, against the oppression. Mafolofolo is a narrative that traces a history of violence, racism, extraction, and ongoing dispossession with very real contemporary urgencies. Still, it is also an opportunity for different imaginaries of relation with the land.
A series of programmes were hosted with Kassel-based garden and farming spaces including talks, film screenings and listening sessions. These were held prior to the start of documenta fifteen and were focused on a linking kassel-based community of practice that works the land. Thank you to…
Gärtnerei Fuldaaue
Neue Brüderkirche
Forstfeld Garten
Mpathi Motha
Marwa Arsanios
Fernando Garcia Dory - INLAND