Maryam Kazeem of Okay Africa in conversation with Wura-Natasha Ogunji:
More hereOKA: Performance art often involves creating a spectacle. Do you ever worry that people are more focused on the spectacle rather than the messages you’re trying to convey?
Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman? Image credit: Ema Edosio
Wura-Natasha Ogunji: I’m interested in creating a particular exchange between the performers and the audience. This requires a kind of respect and consideration for the public which I don’t at all associate with spectacles. When I think about a spectacle it brings to mind a particular image or event that is intended to shock. And things that shock us don’t necessarily create opportunities for conversations or transformation. I love this question you are asking because it really gets at the challenge of creating meaningful performance.
As an artist I am creating certain parameters and asking certain questions but I don’t determine the answers and I certainly don’t own the experience. The collective is incredibly important to this process–be they audience members or performers or students trying performance for the first time or a bystander who participates. I expect the audience to do some work, to ask questions, to figure some things out on their own. People sometimes ask, what is this about? And my first answer is always, what do you think it’s about? What did you see, feel and experience?
I have found people in Lagos to be very generous. They ask questions. They respect the performance and the performers. They give a lot. But they also require a lot because you can see crazy things here on a daily basis, in any moment. I am very interested in interruptions and disorientation. The fact that we are women occupying public space in unexpected ways is an immediate interruption. I want people to stop to look because they are seeing something that calls their attention in a particular way–and not in a violent way. A fight can stop traffic. I want to interrupt someone’s daily journey with something different. I want people to stop, to witness, to comment on the work or ask questions because they feel drawn to it, pulled by it in a way that expands the imagination.
