Corks and Memories
De Faustin Linyekula
My dance will be an attempt to remember my name. I must have lost it somewhere along the dark alleys of Memory. I’ve been wandering ever since…
1974, just a minute after I was born, lines from a conversation with my fathers
My fathers: Here is a name for you, here’s your home.
I: (repeating after my fathers) my name is Linyekula, son of Mobutu, with pride I embrace thy glory, oh Zaire, immortal Land of my Ancestors.
Thus I was born in a land called Zaire, the most caring hand I could ever find under the sunlight. I grew up believing in this, until …
1997, lines from a conversation with History
Zaire was but a lie invented by Mobutu, a dead exiled land. Perhaps my name is Kabila; perhaps I’m a bastard son of King Leopold II and the Independent State of Congo. I’m a kid soldier scavenging through a heap of lies, raped virgins and cholera. Democratic Republic of Congo was my real name, rectified my fathers… My glorious legacy…
Where’s the truth? Is there a stone or owl or river or sorcerer out there to teach
“how to walk to myself
One possible answer: land of exile or native land, perhaps everywhere is but exile; perhaps my only true country is my body. I’ll thus survive like a song that’s never been written…
to my People
when my blood is on fire and my history in ruins”? (Adonis)
Another possible answer: now that we’ve met in this space, comrade, let’s stop for a while and sit side by side. I’ll tell you my name and sing my National Anthem or whatever I remember of it and you’ll tell me yours; then we’ll go our separate ways, leaving behind a fragile scent, our presences like shadows in dust…
Is this Art? Is this Dance? Is this Contemporary African Dance?
How will I know if this is art? Do you call Art one’s attempt to resist to the cycle of destruction by planting seeds of beauty/ seeds of dreams in a hopeless context? What then when this resistance is written in one’s body? The body as the last shield for freedom. Freedom to die of hunger and diseases…
Now I’m going round and round the same circles, I feel confused and lost, I guess I have to shut up now, enough of this futility, Contemporary African Art, my foot!… In any case I don’t give a damn about Africa. Whenever I write, it’s strictly “for myself, for a few friends and to appease the course of time”(Jorge Luis Borges). My time… Why the hell should I care about Africa? My portion of Africa doesn’t care about me. Years of war, raped women, epidemics, millions killed… That’s my legacy from my fathers; at best I’m left with some energy to survive on my heap of ruins… Independent State of Congo… Democratic Republic of Congo… Republic of Zaire… King Leopold II… Lumumba… Mobutu…
Going on stage: an attempt to remember my name. Trying to show a body that refuses to die. Scavenging through the ruins of what I thought was a house in search of clues: a poem by Rimbaud, Banyua rituals my grand-mother took me through, Ndombolo dance steps from a music video by Papa Wemba, Latin classes with Father Pierre Lommel… Whatever I find will be useful… Aesthetics of survival… Bundling together whatever comes my way to build a temporary shelter… I improvise… Improvisation here is not an aesthetic luxury, but a state of living, surviving: in such a hostile context, where one never really knows what tomorrow will be made of (another war? An epidemics?), one needs to know how to improvise to remain alive…
Fine if Africa doesn’t give a damn. All that matters is whether my grand-mother cares. For I know how strange an animal contemporary creation is. The question is: how can I create a sense of identification with such a weird medium? Could she ever say after seeing my dance: “Well… I don’t understand anything… yet I recognise it”?
My dance will be an attempt to cork up spaces of encounters… I must have lost my name somewhere in the dark alleys of History… And I’ve been wandering ever since… 1974… Kabako… King Leopold II… Legacy… 1997… Songs… Exiles… Adonis…
Ah, soleil!