‘I would like people to listen more’: An interview with Alberta Whittle

November 5, 2019
Still from 'from the forest to the concrete (to the forest)' (2019, Alberta Whittle). Courtesy of the artist.

In Alberta Whittle’s newest video works, the current climate crisis is intimately linked with the aftermath of slavery and colonialism. The BL CK B X exhibition at LUX, organised and presented by LUX Scotland, Accumulating gestures: from the forest to the concrete (to the forest), brings together two films, quilts, and a poem by the Barbadian-Scottish artist. In between a whisper and a cry (the Margaret Tait Award 2018/19 commission) and from the forest to the concrete (to the forest) (made for Whittle’s recent show at Dundee Contemporary Arts), there are moments of grief and reflection, but also room for hope and empathy. We spoke to Alberta Whittle as she prepared her new exhibition, which will be open from 6 November to 14 December at LUX.

Could you tell me about the context in which between a whisper and a cry was made? 

I received the Margaret Tait Award in February 2018. I always knew that I wanted this film to stretch my ambitions about what was possible with film because this award meant that suddenly I had a much larger budget but also access to resources I didn’t have. It also meant that I could bring people into the project and pay them properly for their work, which is really important to me. I had been looking at the different precarities of geography and what it means to work in the West whilst there are such global catastrophes that impact, for instance, people in my life, in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is at the vanguard of climate catastrophe and when I started making between a whisper and a cry it came in the third consecutive year of above-average devastating hurricanes and storms. In conversations with friends and colleagues in the UK, I was really struck by the apathy and also numbness in terms of how people responded to this global notion of precarity, and that troubled me so much. I was really struck by the apathy when I started trying to open these conversations about what was going on in these communities that I am part of in the Caribbean, and I wanted to create a film which was able to open up these discussions, especially in terms of trying to relate my film to notions of power, exclusion, and complicity.

In my research, I found out that the countries that are most vulnerable, encountering water-rising levels or devastating storms are generally countries that have not contributed the most to issues of global warming or capitalism. The film was designed to start opening up these ideas. I divided the film into different chapters. The prologue introduces these ideas of the weather and relates to Christina Sharpe’s research. The film is structured around this poem from the Anglophone Caribbean: ‘June too soon, July standby, August look out we must, September remember, October all over’, and then what becomes an epilogue which comes in the voice of Odetta. What I realised in this research is that this poem, which I grew up with, is really out of date because of where we are with environmental issues; the hurricane season is extended much longer, they begin in April and then the season can go on until November. Within that structure of different sections, I wanted the soundtrack and the visuals to create this feeling that we were within a wave, that we were going through these moments of being submerged and considering our bodies as falling beneath the threshold of the wave, and how you can come up for air when the wave is dragging you under. Within certain moments I would feel like the August-September are about being in the deepest points in the ocean, and this is also this point where it becomes like a crucible for all fo these ideas to come together. But the part with Odetta, which is in October, is meant to be a moment when we wake up. Throughout the film, we have these particular rhythms meant to create these moments when you’re submerged, but then there’s the privilege as well.

As a spectator, you feel that as a moment of pause and reflection on the complex intersections of history that you have been drawing since the beginning of the film. You do it very powerfully through Sharpe’s writing, especially through her quote that opens up these connections between the slave trade and the climate devastation of today. 

The way in which she refers to what it means to live in the aftermath of slavery and where the climate and the weather really reflect this climate of anti-blackness that is so prevalent everywhere. I found her research so poetic in terms of how she creates these jarring metaphors which bring together these contested histories of what is going on today with issues of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean to come to Europe, but she also creates these moments where you relate this yourself and to your own memories, and for me that’s very deeply important so people can insert themselves into the film. 

The way that gestures and the movement of the body tell part of the story is also very beautiful. Can you speak about how this part of the film is connected to other aspects of your work and research?

This was meant to be a very different film. It was meant to be about sound and language, and how the boat becomes a crucible for all these musical traditions to come together–the boat, the ship, the open water. Édouard Glissant’s text The Open Boat has also been important to me. I feel as though quite often I’m really stuck in that boat, but I’m really curious about how we can find ways to manoeuvre within these restrictions and the boundaries that are in place when it comes to the movement of people but also what that means locally, in terms of how certain communities are ghettoized. When I was constructing the film, whilst talking about really difficult things, for it to be possible to spread healing and rest throughout, so the rhythm is meant to create those moments.

The installation that comes about in the LUX library is also meant to create these moments of pause to start thinking about repair-work, healing work, also ancestries and different family lineages and whether they come from blood relatives or chosen family. The blankets and quilts in the gallery are very personal objects: there’s one that my mother made for me on my 30th birthday. It’s a beautiful large quilt and it’s something which I’ve used a lot in my performances and workshops because I think it’s important to encourage people to rest whilst looking at this work, especially people of colour. There are two blankets that which one of my best friends her grandmother gave to her and they are the last work she made for her grandchildren, so her hands and energy are still really imbued in that work. The last quilt was made collaboratively with a very close friend of mine, Fenella Gabrysch, who stitched together these family trees that I had made after Ama Josephine Budge (who writes about my work in the book) asked me to make them so she could try to understand the different ways in which my work tries to consider history, genealogy and moments of anti-blackness prevalent within my own family, and how that mirrors so much that’s going on within these different communities, whether they are on the Caribbean or in the UK. I think what I’d like for audiences is to understand how these ideas are interrelated. These are not issues that I just want migrants or people of colour of black people to be concerned with, they are all interrelated because I am not responsible to hold these histories within me; these are all global histories.

Which is something that the Octavia Butler quote at the beginning of from the forest to the concrete (to the forest) really speaks to, especially considering that the film was produced as a response to the devastation brought about by hurricane Dorian. How was the process of responding to a catastrophic event that is so difficult to grasp? 

The ‘August’ chapter from between a whisper and a cry was the first one I made, and for me, that is really the lynchpin of the work, because it speaks of notions of capitalism that have gone on to create these moments of climate catastrophe, where the black body is pushed into the millstone and is constantly in this grind of labour. Glitching is meant to create these moments where technology is fighting back but also to speak about how these bodies become like zombies. There’s a lot of fear that went into making between a whisper and a cry because it was deep into the hurricane season, and it was a year later, almost to the day, when I made from the forest. It is really intense grief that drove both of these films, and a deep terror, because the idea that we might not be able to repair Earth, that we might not be able to repair the land or the sea, really haunts me. It really haunts me: when I spoke to people who were in the Bahamas or who had family there they spoke about the lingering stench of death and the repeating loops of these traumas. I really didn’t want to reproduce the trauma and I was very particular about the images, that they did not reproduce trauma and violence, I did not want to reproduce the atrocities that are present in these encounters with the weather.

I film a lot wherever I am so both films have parts shot in Scotland, Africa or the Caribbean, and they’re meant to create these linkages between these places, but also to try to speak about refuge. Is it possible to even have refuge? I am still haunted by the idea of these people left behind and there is nothing for them. How is that rebuilding possible? Whilst I still feel incredibly haunted by what’s going on there (because I worry about what’s going to happen to my family every time the hurricane season happens, that they might be wiped out by the devastation of the storms), I try to have hope in making the work, that it’s possible to create empathy through sharing moments and considering these ideas together in the films or in the installation, that we can find a greater fellow feeling. I want people to consider the numbness which might stop them from feeling, to allow themselves to understand their own precarity, how they need to work with others and be collaborative in their mindset and the ways in which they work. This exhibition is a collaborative exhibition; there are many people who might not be named but they are present in the making of the work because conversations with others really drove this work. 

Opening up these conversations is certainly one step towards the recognition of the daunting challenges that this crisis poses to all of us regardless of where we are in the world, and excuse me for asking a naive question, but what would have to change, what would have to happen in order for real transformation to take place? 

I think a lot about this question. There are many movements, decolonial movements, really important moments of activism, people questioning what’s happening and it always seems to be that people in power are not listening. In a very small way, I would like people to listen more, those people in power to listen more, and consider sharing those privileges so that we can become more equitable, so that society can become more equitable, and we aren’t encountering atrocities like close to 40 people travelling from Vietnam in a lorry and dying on the way. It’s a new story for a couple of days until something juicier comes along. So I think the media should be holding itself more accountable for the stories they choose to focus on and they could be a point of galvanising the public response to act and maybe acting locally if they can’t act globally. For me, that’s really key. People often tell me about the devastation they may have left in their homelands; they’ve come to the UK in very difficult, straitened circumstances, and they tell me about the difficulties they still encounter here. There’s a sense that these issues have nothing to do with us because in the UK when we hear about hurricane Dorian the next news is ‘Isn’t it wonderful we’re gonna have warm weather’, and what does that tell the public? That they shouldn’t worry about the fact that people are dying and that nothing to do with them because we’re gonna have sunny weather. 

What have you learned about yourself as an artist through the process of making these films, which as you describe them, are so steeped in grief, in thought, in urgency and in love? 

I’ve learned to work with others better. I think for me that’s been the most positive outcome. As someone who hasn’t had a studio and has worked largely from my bedroom, and worked pretty much in isolation, these two films meant that I opened up my practice to others. I have listened, they’ve given me an opportunity to listen and to trust in collaborative work, and the fact that collaboration can hold you and be incredibly healing, and I didn’t know that until I started making this work. People are prepared to hold you in doing this really difficult work and to put their bodies on the line for you and allow you to put your body on the line but let heal once you’ve done that. That’s something I wasn’t anticipating when I started making this work, that that would change. Although it’s been a difficult I’m really galvanised by the hope of working with others and what that can mean for me and for them. The poem in the window came about when we were making the quilt and I was making from the forest to the concrete. I don’t normally share my poetry, but that came from recognising that through my grief (and it is grief dealing with this work) I can build my new constructs of family and that’s something I hadn’t appreciated, that we might be living in the aftermath of slavery, and climate catastrophe, but the possibility of new families, and new bloodlines, and new ancestry or forms of recognition of ancestry.

The exhibition Accumulating gestures: from the forest to the concrete (to the forest) is open 6 November – 14 December 2019 at LUX, Wed-Sat, 12p,-4pm. It is curated by LUX Scotland. Join us for a special breakfast viewing on Wed 6 November, 9am-10.30am. Free, all welcome. 

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