Wanja collects stories - her own and other people's. She then shares these stories with others informally, in various arts and performance settings.
The place where you encounter the stories may or may not be the place they originated from. This doesn't matter - the stories could be from anywhere.
In sharing the stories, Wanja gives her audience the space to imagine and wonder - the stories become a springboard, allowing the mind to wander and make its own associations.
Today, Wanja is sharing the story of an old photo album that she came across at a camera shop. She doesn't know who its previous owners were, but there remain a few photos from its past life. These give clues. Wanja has been playing with the photos. Imaging characters, lives and scenarios. She has woven her own story into the album by adding a photo of her family, from when she was a child.
In a one to one conversation with Wanja, viewing the album and chatting, we are allowed to wonder, imagine, create and perhaps even overlay our own stories.
Wanja went wandering in Camden to see whether she could gather stories for this performance.
She met a woman at the markets who recalled the time in the early 80s when the New Romantics paraded around the streets of Camden 'like peacocks'. We are invited to listen to a recording of the woman's recollections. Listening to the story, knowing a little of Camden as it is these days, I could really imagine the colour and spectacle that the woman describes.
As I'm listening to the recording, Wanja is laying out a set of small photographs on the table.
She tells me that the woman who shared the story of the New Romantics in Camden gave her these photos. She says I can choose one to keep. I make a selection from the random group of photos - even though I have no idea of who or where they depict, I am automatically overlaying the stories I've heard and imagined in conversation with Wanja.
On the back of the photo is a single line of text:
'How will you be captured in history?'
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Friday 22 May 2009
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