MEMORY IS A WEAPON June 2020
FIRDOZE BULBULIA Looking back, reaching forward
Firdoze Bulbulia is a South African activist, theatre director, producer, writer and educator. She is CoDirector of Moments Entertainment (a media company with a focus on media education and film production). Through her career she has been involved as an activist in women and children’s movements, using theatre and art as mediums of expression and for conflict resolution. She was central to the The Freedom Charter spells out establishment of the South African exactly how South Africans should Charter on Children’s Right. She has live in a post-Apartheid country. I worked in many developmental programmes and am guided by the Freedom Charter facilitated many workshops in the and my memories of the RED ‘child rights’ and film arenas. She is SQUARE where the Freedom the Chairperson of the Children & Charter was produced are Broadcasting Foundation for Africa cherished memories of (CBFA) and the Chairperson of the #resistance. The Doors Of Learning 5th World Summit on Media for Children. And Of Culture Shall Be Opened!
Helen Joseph Lillian Ngoyi
Rahima Moosa
Sophia Williams De Bruyn
Amina Cachalia #MemoryisaWeapon- is how I infuse memory into my work from a creative “artivist” to an educator and teacher. I am an idealist, a teacher, a student…
GAIRO NAJAM Aunty GeLa Winnie Madikizela Mandela
Shaa'ista Bulbulia
Inspired by the powerful legacy of South African women stalwarts such Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Amina Cachalia, Ruth First and Sophia Williams De Bruyn, and my own grandmother, aunty Gela who was a garment worker and my mother, Gairo who followed in her footsteps as women working on the factory floors -their generations of hardworking women, some trade unionists, others creative clothing and costume designers who could not hold that title because they were black and had to be kept behind factory doors‌women like Jessie Durate’s mother who as trade unionists had to guide the new seamstresses into their jobs and gently hold their hands after they returned from the bosse's office- because they knew what happened behind that closed door. #memory weaves together a collective of personal anecdotes, modern stories and legacies of apartheid, and now #covid19 drawing on these connections through time.
Using social media platforms I want to draw on the rich narratives that are coming out of #isolation and #lockdown- and ask the artists to create new works using #memory as a key theme and relating it to historic themes of #detention during #Apartheid how are we as artists able to transform the current restrictions of movement? #Covid19 compels us to relook at what we considered normal behaviour- how transformative is this "new normal"? Can the creative industries imagine a new future; one in which our online and lockdown
personalities
interact
with
the
#freedom of #movement, freedom of voice, freedom of performance. In this period we have an
There is a predominance of anxiety and fear but if we recreate our #memories that resonate with hope and new beginnings can we create a more humane future?
opportunity to work from our homes in a profound and intimate way with artists who are 'essential workers' offering #hope and #dreaming of a transformed future one in which all these restrictions co-exist to create harmony and art.
We need to explore this with our youth, the disabled communities, the marginalised -those who felt outside of the mainstream -and now as we are in #lockdown and #isolated together we find a new narrative, a different hope a kinder spirit.
"'Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it"
- Arundhati Roy (2020).
DRAWING ON THIS QUOTE We will bring together performance and installation including visual arts. The production will start a social media movement on the #hashtag of #memoryisaweaponusing social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) for women globally to start the conversation.
WOMEN SPEAK OUT The #MeToo movement sparked a generation of women speaking out about abuse and unfortunately, #Covid19 has brought #GBV into sharp focus as women and children are in #lockdown with their preparators. I want to speak about #memory and how #women's #voices have been
POWERFUL INSPIRATION Starting from the #Winnie Mandela documentary that post Mama Winnie's death brought into sharp focus the sinister patriarchal systems that silence women’s voices. The online performance is inspired by the legacy of this powerful icon who fought a brutal system in the most elegant and focused way.
On Representation This production works into an ongoing research that I am doing on #memoryisaweapon. Considering the book of uncle Don Mattera "Memory is the Weapon" and the artistic works of Robin Rhode a South African artist living in Berlin his work is entitled "Memory is the Weapon". I am interested in the ideas of memory and how it brings us into our own.
I am also interested in my personal #memories of my own activism and detention and the silencing of my own voice as a black female of Indian descent. I used to attend FUBA in 1981 and the rich experience there has also left an indelible mark that I wish to explore and recount as I work on the memoirs of South African female activists like Mama Winnie, Aunty Amina Cachalia, and I am looking at younger voices in this time of the #coronavirus and how are we coping as people of colour, as marginalised voices, as artists and activists.
I would like to be remembered for Transformation- Artivism- Creating Opportunities‌ I am an activist!