From a place of grace
__
Here we are on the concrete estuary edge of the Thames. On one side lies water at low tide, over the embankment is Rainham marshes. Usually when I meet with artists for studio visits or interviews I make copious notes. I interject frequently, asking for elaboration or clarification, taking the artist on diversions that may or may not prove useful later. But today my pencil barely touches paper: the draw of the Thames, I write, reckoning with the past, crystals: rose quartz, black obsidian etc. And then stop.
Your words are threaded through mine and hers and ours here.
D’you want to say that again?
Delayed waves lap the shoreline as boats pass by.
I stop to follow your lines of thought that, increasingly, overlap. You look at each other directly to help dislodge the name of one of your collaborators, you guess at the ending of each other’s sentences, you nod excitedly in agreement, reaffirming each other as details from the day emerge through your retelling. I stop trying to root around for what I think I’m after and instead listen to what together you are uncovering.
These waves are out of sync,
out of alignment with the tide.
We pause.
Water rises, gradually blanketing the tangled clumps of sun-baked seaweed, rocks and sand. It strikes me that what we’re up to is the inversion of that: in coming here – where Eelyn Lee and Annetha Mills worked together on Futurist Women three years ago – we are exposing that film, or at least its making, or at least its aftermath. We are thinking about how it came about, what it felt like to be a part of (then as well as now), and how its effect lingers. We’re trying to look beneath the film, to the time before the film and the time since the film, because, actually, the film itself is just one small part of the work they did together. But I can’t hold onto all of this and instead become lost in your story and my pronouns are slipping and my tenses invert.
Do you remember the silver hand?
The making of costumes, and the moving of words around a page, around a space, around your mouths, feed into each other.
You read the film differently, given what we know now.
Futurist Women is short and otherworldly. Dreamlike shots pan across bodies and diaphanous fabrics and marshlands. The lens meets the gazes of the women pictured directly, it roves over their billowing, costumes, and follows their footfall and outstretched arms. Lines of golden reeds push in and out of focus and a series of female voices speak of homes and goddesses and violence and quiet power.
Being able to just play a different version of yourself.
Here as well as there.
D’you want to say that again?
We retrace our steps. Under our arms and over our shoulders we lug a pink sun parasol and stand, two wooden garden chairs, along with the rest of our bags and recording equipment, back up the bank of wild roses and purple flowers I don’t know the name of. Our skin is wet from the June heat. As we leave the estuary behind, Eelyn and Annetha’s words ring on: space for healing, the memories it brings back, out of alignment, a survivor. The film alludes to all this through words written by Annetha and other survivors of sexual and domestic violence. But here Annetha goes further. She recounts more recently setting up her own organisation by and for women of colour to support and empower other survivors marginalised by their race and gender. It is called Niara, which means, ‘with the utmost purpose’. She retraces her steps.
I said enough is enough.
Enough is enough.
Annetha reads. She wears part of the headdress that she made in workshops before filming Futurist Women. It’s made of twigs and moss spray painted ice-grey that splay out around her head. She holds her head still and high to keep it from slipping off. She reads, falling into the cadences I’d become familiar with from watching and re-watching Futurist Women. She looks up and away. She begins again.
Are you filming this?
If you wanted to look up,
look into the distance to that horizon line.
