There’s A Hole In The Sky Part II; listening to James Baldwin

‘There’s a Hole in the Sky Part II, 2016, follows the trail of sugar back over the Atlantic, where footage of the Tate & Lyle factory in east London is overlaid with an imagined conversation with American writer James Baldwin. The latter half of the video features an extensive dance scene from the film Stormy Weather, 1943, one of the few Hollywood films of the time to feature black performers in lead roles. The scene is an impressive number performed by the Nicholas brothers, who, like Baldwin, fled to Paris to escape racism in their home country; they were innovators in dance, but after the end of the Second World War were relegated as behind-the-scenes choreographers for films, enabling performers like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire to become known for their moves. Over the top of their dextrous performance, Cammock gives an extended musing on appropriation: ‘Experience is constructed through action, feeling, intrusion, intervention, absorption, but how we make sense of these begins to build meaning. It’s all about moving, but the machines are so loud we can’t hear the voices of those we are taking from.’ It’s not simply, the artist suggests, a matter of giving credit where credit is due, but unpicking the hierarchies of how and why such credit is given in the first place.’Chris Fitte- Wassilak