25 min
EPISODE TEN: By The Rivers Of Amazon... Landmark
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- Documentary
I mentioned a QR CODE - but had to use this support link instead:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Landmark
(There is a button on the page for payment submissions - the virtual coffee translates to my production time.)
CREDITS
Music design for this episode was by Samuel Francis Johnson; the 3d audio water soundscape you heard was recorded with a hydrophone in the springs of Table Mountain by the artist Mia Thomm; Thanks to Micha Espinosa and Sara Matchett for the deep dive into an understanding of voice and ritual, to Tauriq Jenkins for his cultural perspectives on the Two Rivers confluence, and for Daily Maverick for use of that extract from Cormac Cullinen: https://www.wildlaw.net/resources-and-library/daily-maverick-webinar-should-nature-have-rights
Comprehensive assessment of the Cultural significance
PODCAST OUTLINE
Recently, a Lamentation ritual was held at the Liesbeek and Black river confluence, Cape Town, to express the sense of outrage but also the centuries of cultural evisceration that has occurred to first nation groups in South Africa.
The event was shared by a group from Arizona, led by Micha Espinosa, Professor at Arizona State University who regularly collaborates with the performance art group La Pocha Nostra. Her response to Trump's 'No Tolerance' policy at the US-Mexico border, that separates parents and children who cross the border articulated a similar sense of outrage.
The event was also a collaboration with SARA MATCHETT, associate professor at the University of Cape Town’s The Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, and a group who shares the vision of embodied vocal work - what some have termed 'Sonic Activism'. The voices of the two performers in this episode were those of Ntombi Makhutshi and Adriana Jamisse.
THE RIVER
If you look in the direction of Table Mountain - or ‘Hoerikwaggo’ - to what hikers call Devil’s Peak, you’re facing the Liesbeek river source. Like the spring water arteries that move under the city of Cape Town, there is a sense of continuity with an ancient history. A sense of sacred place that makes it a place of ritual and worship.
Amazon's presence here at the river site has created division - some have favoured the employment opportunity that Amazon claims to offer - in a country with one of the heftiest unemployment rates - as well as the promises that Amazon has made to build an indigenous heritage centre and clean up the wetlands area around it.
The argument is that the river confluence and wetland area is surrounded by highways - what developers claim has been a neglected space occupied by a dilapidated golf course, parking lot, dump site, and a heavily polluted river. Exactly why the presence of a multi national might have some meaningful contribution to make. Others find those claims laughable, coming from a multi national with the track record of employee exploitation in other countries.
However you see the dispute here about land rights, what is clear is that there is deeply felt attachment to this area. The sense of injustice that was felt from the first time land was divided up by a Colonial governor. Here’s an entry from the Dutch East India journal 6 April 1660:
" ..This day peace was renewed at the Fort with the captain and chief … and all the principal and oldest of the tribe … They dwelt long upon our taking every day for our own use more of the land, which had belonged to them from all ages, and on which they were accustomed to depasture their cattle They asked, wether, if they were to come into Holland, they would be permitted to act in a similar manner…"
IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHA ESPINOZA
Ref. Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.
https://www.amazon.com/Borde
I mentioned a QR CODE - but had to use this support link instead:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Landmark
(There is a button on the page for payment submissions - the virtual coffee translates to my production time.)
CREDITS
Music design for this episode was by Samuel Francis Johnson; the 3d audio water soundscape you heard was recorded with a hydrophone in the springs of Table Mountain by the artist Mia Thomm; Thanks to Micha Espinosa and Sara Matchett for the deep dive into an understanding of voice and ritual, to Tauriq Jenkins for his cultural perspectives on the Two Rivers confluence, and for Daily Maverick for use of that extract from Cormac Cullinen: https://www.wildlaw.net/resources-and-library/daily-maverick-webinar-should-nature-have-rights
Comprehensive assessment of the Cultural significance
PODCAST OUTLINE
Recently, a Lamentation ritual was held at the Liesbeek and Black river confluence, Cape Town, to express the sense of outrage but also the centuries of cultural evisceration that has occurred to first nation groups in South Africa.
The event was shared by a group from Arizona, led by Micha Espinosa, Professor at Arizona State University who regularly collaborates with the performance art group La Pocha Nostra. Her response to Trump's 'No Tolerance' policy at the US-Mexico border, that separates parents and children who cross the border articulated a similar sense of outrage.
The event was also a collaboration with SARA MATCHETT, associate professor at the University of Cape Town’s The Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies, and a group who shares the vision of embodied vocal work - what some have termed 'Sonic Activism'. The voices of the two performers in this episode were those of Ntombi Makhutshi and Adriana Jamisse.
THE RIVER
If you look in the direction of Table Mountain - or ‘Hoerikwaggo’ - to what hikers call Devil’s Peak, you’re facing the Liesbeek river source. Like the spring water arteries that move under the city of Cape Town, there is a sense of continuity with an ancient history. A sense of sacred place that makes it a place of ritual and worship.
Amazon's presence here at the river site has created division - some have favoured the employment opportunity that Amazon claims to offer - in a country with one of the heftiest unemployment rates - as well as the promises that Amazon has made to build an indigenous heritage centre and clean up the wetlands area around it.
The argument is that the river confluence and wetland area is surrounded by highways - what developers claim has been a neglected space occupied by a dilapidated golf course, parking lot, dump site, and a heavily polluted river. Exactly why the presence of a multi national might have some meaningful contribution to make. Others find those claims laughable, coming from a multi national with the track record of employee exploitation in other countries.
However you see the dispute here about land rights, what is clear is that there is deeply felt attachment to this area. The sense of injustice that was felt from the first time land was divided up by a Colonial governor. Here’s an entry from the Dutch East India journal 6 April 1660:
" ..This day peace was renewed at the Fort with the captain and chief … and all the principal and oldest of the tribe … They dwelt long upon our taking every day for our own use more of the land, which had belonged to them from all ages, and on which they were accustomed to depasture their cattle They asked, wether, if they were to come into Holland, they would be permitted to act in a similar manner…"
IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHA ESPINOZA
Ref. Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.
https://www.amazon.com/Borde
25 min