The Divine Trash Strata

This essay is based upon field work in Haiti, where I was invited to take part in the first Ghetto Bienalle - Port au Prince. I was hosted by a community of artists - Artis Resistanz - who combine Vodou culture and sculpture. During the opening event a rectangular black plastic oil container was transformed into a video camera, by the children of the Grand Rue ghetto. This performative act provided not only insight into the role of apparatus and the power of a playful dream, but by transcending its materiality - this black box fulfilled (and thrilled) the aspirations of those involved, beyond that very moment. What is also notable when the oil container black box is altered by the camera man performing with this salvaged vessel as if it is a recording devise, it has an embodied affect upon all participants - the people whom are in the frame and those whom hold the devise and frame the shot. Such an intersubjective experience has a transforming effect, the apparatus of the black box oil container makes people behave in novel ways - faces turn towards it, people speak and act in formal ways according to their role their entire body performs and turns 'on' as if being viewed and broadcast by a remote presence or audience - allowing new insights into the immediate transformative power of an object that brings one into being.