[Nettime-bold] [ot] [!nt] \n2+0\

[integer@www.god-emil.dk]

>   I wish to complete a screenplay for a film that will capture and
> transmit the experience of a white foreign woman in Tanzania.  The west
> has mystified Africa, and it is difficult to travel there without
> expecting something magical, something "other."  Living there is a
> process of de-mystification and a re-mystification -- a process that
> occurs through exposure to the horrors of a developing nation and the
> kindness that survives in spite of the daily horrors.  There is so much
> hatred for the rich, white ex-patriot class which the average
> bus-operator can never reach, that to be white and not rich -- riding
> busses like everyone else -- puts one in an accessible position for the
> angry to vent their rage.  No matter it is the truly rich that anger
> them -- any white person will do.  So one is grabbed, pushed, yelled at,
> mocked and ridiculed while walking through public places.  On the other
> hand, personal relationships reveal a kindness and a hospitality that is
> overwhelming in the face of such abject poverty.
>       Driving north to Arusha, for example, applying one's lipstick in
> the rear-view mirror of a car and seeing in the same rear-view mirror a
> group of young Massai dressed all in black with white masks painted on
> their faces as they undergo the transformation to man-hood -- one is
> tempted to look in wonder and awe at such make-up and plumage.  But one
> cannot help but to examine one's own ritual of coverage -- applying a
> lipstick -- without seeing a similarity, some human impulse to decorate
> and transform the body through external artifice.  Terror, another
> moment, coming across a grass cutter with his machete when one is
> unfamiliar with the practice and sees only a man with a machete eying
> one suspiciously.  This man, terribly uncomfortable at the sight of my
> knee as the wind lifts my skirt for a moment knows only his own
> discomfort as I sense only my own in the presence of his intimidating
> weapon which is for him only a tool in the same way my skirt is a normal
> if not long-ish length.  There is a space in these moments in which (if
> one is observing oneself along with the moment) pre-conceived
> notions/suppositions break open to a new moment -- something  very much
> alive -- the possibility for an understanding that goes beyond language
> and education.






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