All Images © 2012
Justin Randolph Thompson
Teach Me to Read Your History is a performance that engages fleeting monumentality and the capacity to construct and deconstruct historical markers. The work employs 50 ladders locally reclaimed in Marrakech to reflect upon spiritual, occupational and social ascension while challenging the fiction of borders. The performance is in dialogue with a collaborative sound work coordinated and directed by by Diese Mbangue that is a meditation on the prelude of Deep Desert sung by Paul Leroy Robeson in the film Dark Sands. It is a call to learn anchored in an acknowledgement of ignorance. Embedded in the performance is the talk "All the Way Live" featuring muSa Michelle Mattiuzzi and Fallon Mayanja on performativity and agency. The work was filmed and edited by Ayoub El bardii and Oussama Ait Belmouden.The work is an outgrowth of the artist’s residency at MACAAL and is realized with partial support from Italian Council and the Direzione Generala di Creatività Contemporanea.