deixem passar (it favors the house)
The brinquinho is a childhood relic of countless hours spent practicing the bailinho - of community, of custom, of commitment. Wednesday evenings spent learning a two-step dance with an equally unenthused teenage partner. The figures, decked in the traditional garb of Madeira, have castanets - representing sacks of produce or money - attached to their shoulders so when the holder pulls the lever up and down, the castanets (re: produce and money) hit the figures’ backs. The brinquinho is no longer a simple dance prop nor is the Bailinho da Madeira a simple song, as upbeat as the tempo may sound. The repeated hitting of bag to back stands for a reminder of the heavy burden placed upon the shoulders of the people, whether it be farmers tolling on the sloped, steeped land (filled with logistical challenges) or ‘those who have come from so far away’ - the diaspora that veins out seeking better economic opportunities.
‘Madeira is the first place in which sugar-cane plantations were incorporated as part of an expanding national society’ (Sidney M. Greenfield) - as an island that was uninhabited until 1419 and subsequently earmarked as potential site for primary sugarcane plantation experiments, the entire islands’ identity was centered on the possibility of sugar wealth. The levadas, irrigation canals, were specifically built for this purpose of maintaining sugarcane plantations, re-directing upper mountain streams to flow into these farms.
Finding our old childhood brinquinho in storage brought up thematic veins of migration, the ‘alien other’ and how this binds capitalism within integration. Of how the migratory rhythm of Madeirans to Venezuela, Hawaii and South Africa was closely affixed to economic promise and potential. Of how the proverbial Madeiran fruit and veg stores in South Africa - ‘I bring these little cabbages here’ - pays heed to the stability that could be located in new lands with new entrepreneurship possibilities, and how this finding of a financial identity becomes embedded within the fabrics of its diasporic culture-moulding/molding.
The up / down motion of activating the brinquinho calls to mind another association - that of the slot machine and its lever - a physical, placebo-like activation of lucky chance. An up / down motion, requiring participation from an external activator.
Perhaps this association is purely personal and cannot be accessed by just any observer. The brinquinho / bailinho is a Madeiran dance that connects me to a heritage that is slowly deteriorating with time / modernization, the slot machine is the neoliberal masquerade of fortune riding on the backs of the ‘bearers of human capital and individual responsibility’ (Garlick, 2021, Technologies of (in)security: Masculinity and the complexity of neoliberalism) that connects me to the last images I have of my father, walking in casinos with him as he lost his own connections to identity and time.
Dollars, Capricorns, Shopping Carts, Mercury Retrogrades, Political Parties, Brands, Religious Affiliations, Bitcoin,
Cult Tragedies, Heralded Histories, Recycled Symbology. Reduced, Intertwined Meaning. Fabricated Immediacy.
‘the signs have spoken’ consists of five works, titled after excerpts from a one-on-one session with an ‘abundance manifestation’ psychic, that display the daily, overwhelming (somewhat confrontational) assault of symbols that proliferate both the URL and IRL space.
There is no discernible meaning. There are only layers upon layers of produced content, a strata of interpretations / misinterpretations.
A return to an empty set, a clean slate, is needed.
you've got a massive karmic relationship with the masculine
Gouache, acrylic, spray paint on acrylic gel base
59.4 x 84.1 cmwoken up a lot of what we would call sleeper cells
Gouache, acrylic, spray paint on acrylic gel base
59.4 x 84.1 cmThe Galactic Council have put forward in the next six months an extinction level event
Gouache, acrylic, spray paint on acrylic gel base
84.1 x 59.4 cmstep into my diamond energy
Gouache, acrylic, spray paint on acrylic gel base
29.7 x 21 cm∅
Gouache, acrylic, spray paint on acrylic gel base
59.4 x 84.1 cm
Chapter 1: Final Drive references
Chapter 2: The Briefcase
from the Briefcase: Halevy Liquors, fathers’ business.
from the Briefcase: My fathers parents’ fruit n veg store (often fruit n veg stores in South Africa are owned by the Madeiran, Pakistani and Greek diaspora.
from the Briefcase: family home, Bloemfontein (South Africa).
from the Briefcase: Sacred Heart Catholic church, Bloemfontein (South Africa).
Chapter 2: The Briefcase references
This is the Future, Hito Steyerl, 2019.
Source: Pinterest (no credit listed).
Scan from Ca’n Terra project.
Source: Pinterest (no credit listed).
How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, Hito Steyerl, 2013.
Chapter 3: Skins
Compilation of CounterStrike & 3rd party skins gambling sites footage.
‘Deception, Lies & Valve’ - Coffeezilla documentary.
‘The Sketchy World of 'CSGO Gambling'
- Josher.
Chapter 4: Bailinho da Madeira / Brinquinho
Footage of bailinho da madeira in Madeira, reference footage from Flores da Madeira group .
Chapter 5: Folkloric Loss - Wicker works,
Neoliberal Roots - Sugarcane
View of Calheta, site of experimental sugarcane plantations in the late 1400s.
Father’s family originated from this village & worked as sugarcane farm workers.
Wicker works in Madeira, 1960s, old postcard.
From an academic article titled ‘Madeira, The Island That Helped Invent Capitalism’.
Sugar cane cutters in Madeira, 1909 via Wikimedia Commons.
Camacha wicker factory in Madeira, closed down in 2020, last remnants of the wicker trade.
Installation References / Sketches
35mm photo taken of an abandoned pachinko business in Takachiho.
Sculpted totems / soapstone
Front & back views of soapstone playing card / human figure.
One side of 8-sided RPG dice.