Journeys & Intimate (re)lations
(or)
Journey as Intimate (Re)lations
Siviwe James
“... the call [is] to move from the age of enunciation to the age of listening, of reception, from owning to owing, from the ways of appropriation, property and ownership to the ways of hosting and gratitude,” (Vistas of Modernity: decolonial aesthesis andthe end of the contemporary by Rolando Vazquez, ‘on listening’, pg 157, 2020)
Uhambo; the journey. Ukuhamba; to journey/travel. It is not just about arriving but the pitstops, enquiries, detours and layovers along the way that make up an experience. In thjourneying we discover new rules, (new forms of) agency, a sensing of visibilities. It is an exchange between the purist and the tourist. Reflecting on my residency has proven to be a layered process too, due to the many exchanges and encounters I had. It was not simply about arriving, talking, making, exploring and leaving; it was a well-timed rebooting of my creative senses; a chance to visit dormant realms. Along the way, I was well received and nurtured, and in turn able to provide space for others and build meaningful connections with new faces from different parts of the globe.
I was hosted by the Centre for Research of Fashion and Clothing (CIMO) in Zagreb (Croatia) for the Briefing on Soft Arts (BoSA) program. It’s a program with a focus on the concept of soft arts and softness in relation to designer and artistic practices. “It is soft like different treatments; like soft gestures or different aspects of softness that are in relation to textiles. Things that relate more to the soul than the physical body,” explains Professor Tonči Vladislavić (founder and associate at CIMO). Having completed the recording and production of the first season of UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa1 I had wanted to linger on the audio-visual presentations of this work. My participation in the BoSA program meant that I could engage with some of the loose threads of my sonic interventions from a different place. It also allowed me to focus on female oral histories in relation to other local material cultures and craft practices.
As an inaugural research collaboration between myself as a creative researcher, CIMO and the African Fashion Research Institute (AFRI), the program presented as an opportunity to share vernacular practices and knowledges and locate alternate ways of connecting with fashion, dress stories and storytellers from different parts of the world. The residency supported a close and deep listening to the material stories shared and the nuances of archival practices within everyday histories. The programme’s broader provocation asked how a South-facing creative praxis could be nurtured in relation to material outputs that deal in everyday knowledges, and how these shared explorations could offer new perspectives and threads for fashion research communities in Zagreb and South Africa?
Sojourn 1: Provenance
I was fortunate to have time en-route to Croatia to make Johannesburg a long layover destination. It afforded me the chance to visit THE PROVENANCE PART II, an exhibition by Lukhanyo Mdingi, co-curated and in collaboration with Banele Khoza and Manor Africa. Held at the Women’s Jail Exhibition Wing of Constitution Hill, the exhibition activated a tactile and ephemeral layering of history, culture and memory within this historical site. Experiencing slivers of Mdingi’s personal history, the Lovedale Press and Amadodana Ase Wesile brought to view a complex inscribing of the intangible personhood and black cultural influences on South Africa’s social fabric. Without the exhibitions sound (an audio of Mdingi’s grandmother doing a reading in isiXhosa) the furniture items and written language used in the rooms felt a little ghostly. It was the scene (room setting) of Mdingi’s grandmother’s lounge that draws you in, making you want to settle on the chosen rug to listen in. It is in Mdingi’s text to us, “you are invited into a poetic listening experience as Mama’s voices emanate and revibrates in … isiXhosa, reciting readings from Incwadi Yam,” that I am reminded of what is missing here. The absence of voice. I found myself envious of what her voicing in the room, while I was there, would have done to me. How might it have changed my feelings as I stood in front of that wall unit, taking in the porcelain, memories and sense of (H)ome2 that was being created in the space?
True to the Lukhanyo Mdingi we have come to know through his fashion collections, the exhibition is tender, gentle, memorial and celebratory of key names and institutions that are embedded in black consciousness. Temporarily displayed in the Women’s Jail there is a transcendent entanglement with the ghosts of the past. Mdingi brings peace, familiarity and care of his childhood memories into a place that holds harsh reminders of apartheid. A place where female stalwarts and their accounts of humiliation and silencing are captured and curated as a part of our collective remembering. For a site originally designed as a place of subjugation, oppression and humiliation, Mdingi offers us a collection of examples of black freedom, agency and re-existence.
Making my way through the rest of the jail, I found myself faced with the complexities of curating history sites/museums and violent histories. How do we bring everyday audiences to these spaces to sit with these fixed (hi)stories? Can violent sites be regenerative in this day and age? Can they be participatory and inviting? Should they be any of these things or are they meant to remain rather ‘matter of fact’ with the materials and experiences they hold? As we moved beyond the Mdingi exhibition to view the rest of the prison, I found myself being gravely overwhelmed by the socio-political complexities and juxtapositions of the many other stories3 that were projecting from the cells. The Women’s Jail, now a heritage museum, brings in the provocation of which places can be activated as sites of memory and what do these activations afford those (hi)stories? But, most importantly how do we listen into black women’s stories? What is needed to in order for their voices to be heard from?
What makes this exhibition so significant in my journey, is that it was informing me how personal re-collections and contemporary interventions by custodians of historic events can lead in reparative work in heritage sites. These makers and thinkers (such as the likes of Mdingi and his collaborators) offer alternative ways of reading complex histories and bring archival f(r)ictions4 into view whilst troubling the curation of sites like that of the prison. Curatorial work still needs to grapple with the erasures and silent repetitions of the past.
Sojourn II: Telling Textiles
Having finally arrived in Zagreb after a thirteen-hour flight connecting through Istanbul, I was collected by my Bolt driver, and we proceeded to make our way to my destination. Zagreb is described by the locals as being small5 but from my lens it felt big. As we made our way into the city center, we travelled a road that presented an industrial history of Zagreb. In between green fields and short houses were aging metal structures and heavy-duty vehicles. The city emerged in parts, as the flat green land began to shorten and the road split into many parts. The tram rails appeared and I was assured that I was not too far from where I would be dropped off. The European skyline of tram lines weaving connections through the city and the building facades disrupted by graffiti, affirmed my arrival ‘elsewhere’.6
On my first day with Lea Vene, curator and researcher, and Professor Tonči Vladislavić, my CIMO hosts, I was introduced to Aïcha Abbadi from Berlin who was also on a CIMO residency. Aïcha’s artistic work explores fashion's boundaries and reflects on the discipline in terms of its narrative potential and poetry, the industry's complex social relations, its ethical and environmental shortcomings, as well as its optimism.7 Her residency exploration into the scarves and aprons traditionally worn by women in rural Croatia as sartorial national symbols, allowed her to expand on her previous work titled Ilica Investigations. Under a new title Ilica Translations, a new collection of TELLING TEXTILES explores current issues and the spaces of potential and artisanal production through artistic fashion research.8
I attended Aïcha’s workshop, Telling Textiles – Scarves and Cravats in the basement of the City Museum Zagreb, where a few tables, blue chairs and a kitchenette offered an insight into the location’s previous histories as catacomb-turned-restaurant. As each participant arrived, the room opened up to a new dialogue, one of enquiry, of recollection and making. I was amazed by the range of professions shared by the women from retired bankers and economists who worked in the Ministry of Environmental Protections to former university marine science professors. However, there was a common thread which was their domestic relationship with fashion making, a sort of fashion lineage, whether it was taught skills in making (sewing and embroidery work) or family histories (in the fashion industry). Aicha’s asked the participants to reflect on how embroidery and head scarves were forms of telling textile stories. They then used that as a foundation to tell their own stories through needle and thread. Aicha left the sourced images and materials9 in the center of the workstation with the hope that the remnants would inform questions of what traditions are worked from, but also what is moved away from. The workshop was about tying the past to the present to destigmatize folklore and history for contemporary audiences, a kind humanizing of how we read and re-member ourselves to moments in time, through the act of making.
As the room’s participants began their stitching in the makeshift sewing class, a sense of togetherness and acquaintanceship ensued. I sat with Professor Vesna Svetličić who was vibrant, quick and witty with her responses, and seasoned with experiences of life and love. I introduced myself to Vesna as a storyteller and we found our common threads. Vesna as grandmother, divorcee, intellectual and everyday fashion maker, and myself as mother, widow, researcher, fashion practitioner. We spoke about meaningful acts of making in collective bodies and spaces, like the workshop we were in.
[00:23:40 – 00:24:25]
Vesna S “… and you know what is nice, my profession was a totally different thing but uh working with hands was always important and my daughter is very much in this thing … in felting,
… Sharing the story.
My granddaughter has also joined and now its three generations of sitting together … doing … It’s so amazing. I can’t tell you.”
[00:24:47 – 00:24:33]
SJ “… so the stories shared [there], the intimacy is woven into the final fabric. That’s beautiful.”
Vesna S “so its very special.” ***voice breaks
SJ “Did your mother do that with you as well?”
Vesna S “Uuh yes. Yes. And my grandmother and uh at school, at my age, we had this handcraft that we were doing. It was uh nice and we were making presents for our mothers and uh … so it’s from school as well.”
As we continued sharing in stories, the act of making became the catalyst for our intimate exchange in shared experiences. I listened into Vesna’s accounts of raising her kids, re-membering herself to her moments of agency and independence as she navigated her years of being married and finally getting divorced. It is in moments, ‘room settings’ like these that women are able to be found by others. It is in ‘room settings’ like the ones I pictured Vesna, her daughter and granddaughter all seated in, that I see lineal knowledges being exchanged in. Where young and old come to meet in a place of neutrality.These makeshift co-operatives making new listening rooms for the bodies they hold.
Sojourn III: Imiphondo – Tolika Mtoliki
I had been anxious about hosting a workshop and listening session of the podcast’s materials in Zagreb. How does one speak/share on material culture to participants from another part of the world without othering the culture, cloth, rituals and practices that make up the knowledges and histories of the place you are speaking from/with? Even as a Xhosa person, I could fall prey to othering, by reflecting on things that relate to ubuXhosa and my relationship to Xhosa cultural sensibilities in a way that makes them seem estranged from me, even when I am woven into the very thing itself. How do we voice our worlds into new rooms and offer them safe holding spaces?
My presentation began with an intimate workshop also held at the City Museum Zagreb. Workshop participants were asked to bring an item of clothing/accessory that represents/speaks to their material culture or personal history. These heirlooms of sorts, along with the garments and accessories that I had brought with me, became the foundation for our conversation. I wanted us to gather around the materials as women, mothers, daughters, makers and thinkers, and use the space and time as a chance to share memories that weave in the in-betweens of our lives. I emphasized the role vernacular language, the omissions of translations, and the question of legibility in relation to my work.
[00:05:02 – 00:06:41]
“It sits around visibility and using clothing as another way of telling stories. So, I will always speak in isiXhosa because I feel it validates what I am speaking too.” This moment of freeing up language felt important in terms of where we would go as a collective during the session. I also wished for the women to not feel limited by my presence to speak in english10, but to express their memories in a language that more easily called the experience into view. “I see the, the battle that happens when you try to translate yourself between english and your home language. What it takes away from what you are trying to say and the discomfort it causes.” Vernacular languages can give life to feelings and moments and be more ‘tender’ with the memories.
[00:05:02 – 00:06:41]
SJ “But also, I have seen that like … uhm … even in being an ‘outsider’ in this ‘space’, I have felt included [somehow] because I can see how as Croatians even you, go through the same complications of being understood. What english does to you, what it takes away from you.
And so, language becomes a great teaching moment, sitting around with people from a different part of the world.”
A few personal items would act as imiphindo yam yakwaXhosa. They helped me present and explore the dynamics of cultural folds. All the pieces were typical representations of isinxibo kwaXhosa, familiar to most Xhosa girls/women. But, each piece had also been made, sourced and worn by me for specific moments in my life. Some more traditional, while others were evolutions or well-made fast fashion buys. They represented turning points in my life. Prior to the workshop, I had asked myself; why these garments? How will I be speaking with them, to them? What of the material culture/imiphindo kwaXhosa do they convey?
[00:08:14 – 00:10:05]
SJ “… today I have brought some clothes with me that speak of three different ways, just examples, of what Xhosa dress [fashion] has gone through
From modernization, from trying to maintain heritage [heritage practices] as well as what happens when we have got other [outsider] makers, or other production spaces that start to create our heritage cloth [dress].
What does that take away? But also, what does it add [to], or does it complicate?
A lot of imibhaco would have been made [and decorated] by your mothers, your aunts, they would have been made in community.
[But] this piece for example [is] something my mom bought at a China Mall.
So, if something was already made in community, what does it shift when it becomes made and sold in a place that is outside of that culture? What does it take away or does it add?
And then you’ve got another piece, this white skirt which was gifted to me by my aunt. It belonged to my cousin [her daughter] who passed away about 2-3 years ago. I’d never met her but she [my aunt] gave me this outfit. And I remember the first time wearing it, what it did to me to (em)Body her. Someone I’ve never met but I’ve learnt about her through pictures and stories.
So, it’s the different layers of what clothing does to our story. How we carry other people’s stories with us and I thought the items of clothing are great representatives [of that] … but also just to see the colours that we use when it comes to Our11 clothes.”
[00:10:18 – 00:10:30]
SJ “… so we are going to share. I asked that if you could bring something personal, something that represents your heritage. Something that has a story for you uuhm and something that has been passed on or maybe you have received as a passed on moment.”
Tonči noted how in between the personal memories, the cultural significance of objects ‘always remains’. Because of this, in the everyday wearing of certain garments, the meanings are never forgotten. In Croatia, traditional attire is scarcely practiced (more found in rural parts of Croatia), and the meanings and items have become estranged as you move towards cities. Do meanings get permanently lost if the exercise of dressing in traditional ways is no longer visible or practiced daily? Despite the strong representation of traditional Croatian dress in the museum and tourist stalls that carry imitation versions of traditional/rural dress, Croatians do not incorporate this in their dress choices, unlike the normalising of traditional/heritage dress practices in South Africa.
[00:13:41 – 00:15:00]
Sanja P “What troubles me here and what I thought before coming today, is how, me personally and I think ‘us’ … uhm … lost connection, to, with our Croatian origins, or Croatian traditional wearing. Maybe it’s more kept in rural areas because me personally I don’t have any narodna nošnja [traditional costumes] at home for … I don’t know … for dancing or something like that. I have still, staple pieces from my grandmother and my mother. Because my grandmother was really really very well dressed. And uhm … I still wear some pieces of my mother. Even my grandmother but they are not traditional Croatian.”
***The room proceeds to convince Sanja to take out some of the items she had brought with her to the session.
She eventually takes out pillowcases and hand gloves. Both items using lace (which is indicative of Croatian lace) and are pieces from her grandmother. She had disqualified the items for the workshop, feeling as though they do not adequately speak to the provocation of heritage dress (fashion) or passed garments.
[00:19:16 – 00:20:04]
SJ “You know sometimes we get intimidated by what we think is … and yet … It’s like this dress (points to the red babydoll dress made of imibhaco), it’s not ‘traditional Xhosa’ because we bought it in a store [China Mall]. But we build new traditions onto things.”
Sanja P “Yeah but when you see this dress, and this dress from your aunt, uhm … you see the relationship and similarity to the two. That is something that is completely new and different to us.”
As we unpacked our personal and public histories through our relationships to cloth, we considered how we use cloth as a route to our ancestry. I grounded our dialogue with some readings that have inspired my own connections with (H)ome, and my relationship with my work and the communities I co-create with. This included Ancestory by Nokulinda Mkhize (2022)12 which guided a deepened recognition and understanding of what it means to be situated in this fold of culture, community and (H)ome.
[00:15:06 – 00:15:36]
SJ “So these are just little pieces that I’ve enjoyed from this book, and she is writing from her position.
What stands out here in the book is how we are not [just] individuals. We need to begin to recognize ourselves as part of others. Not as a ‘me’ but as a ‘we’.”
It is about understanding that “[we] are a link in an ongoing ancestral chain that connects the past to [our] present and future,” (Mkhize, 2022).
[00:16:58 – 00:17:22]
SJ “And I feel that’s what we are doing here today. And I feel that is what we do when we get dressed sometimes.
Sanja, you have told me of the clothing you collect, I know someone will come after to ‘appropriate’ what you’ve started, and they’ll wear it. And whether you are still here or not, you will live again, through your clothes being worn by someone else.”
The introductory readings supported the conversations, they acted as gentle encouragement on how cloth can speak to dress histories, these being our more domesticated memories where the heart of our identity, moments of vulnerability and constructs of being held in community were more tactile.
on thinking/listening in the ‘we’
The evening was allocated to a listening session. The intimate salon-style preview of Imiphindo kwaXhosa meant that we could host some CIMO friends and associates, as well as some workshops participants. Set up in Professor Tonči’s apartment which acts as CIMOs studio and research space, an intimate arrangement of chocolates, iced tea, rakija and chairs, welcomed our guests as we gathered together to listen in to my podcast’s materials. I chose to present two episodes; Episode 1: Uhambo and Episode 2: iKetshemiya, as great samples for the group in terms of language, (p)resence, voicing and listening. I was a little anxious about presenting Ketshemiya as it is predominantly a Xhosa-narrated episode with no subtitles for audiences who are unfamiliar with the language. I shared my concerns about the room’s capacity to engage with the episode that might not give them much room to understand the full context of what is being presented but everyone was in agreement that the material should be shown and that understanding would be found by other routes as we unpacked afterwards what had been shown. The room itself was gentle. As we spoke of dress codes and the layers of writing that are inscribed on the wearer, the communities they are held in and the knowledges that uphold them, there were a few key threads that stood out.
[00:17:35 – 00:20:06]
SJ “… so it was interesting to learn of the different ways this cloth [iqhiya] has translated itself amongst this community, in particular Willowvale became this remote site where uuhm the practice of dressing with that cultural or collective respect as a part of your way of navigating clothing, it’s one of those small towns that has maintained this. It has maintained this idea of ‘I am not dressing this way because I am forced but I am dressing this way because I am a part of community, this is how we are, this is how we embrace ourselves.’
You come from a bigger city, and you have to neglect urban thinking in order for you to understand how people can still maintain certain ways of responding to life, dressing themselves [in particular ways]. It gives you an appreciation.…but when you are in there, in that community, that thinking is a problem. For you to come with an attitude of uuhm almost like being ‘revolutionist’ it’s a problem there when that community has its own system of thinking through things, of relating to each other, through clothing. It is a part of them. You cannot separate the clothes from the people. It is their language of showing each other who sits where and what role do they play.
So episode 2 is that. it’s us asking the question on the street, it’s me recording how different women have adapted [traditional] clothes, but also how traditional ways of dressing self are still there. Very apparent and the sense of pride [with the people themselves].”
A part of my greater reflections from the podcast’s materials is situated around ‘outsider’ influences on remote communities and their ways of practicing. How the act of over-intellectualizing can ‘other’ systems, people and cultures that have their own ways of being with themselves and the world. I ruminated around how disruptive we (outsiders) can be even in well-meaning ways, and emphasised the importance of first coming to know a group of people, accepting the things that make them function in the world, and rather, finding ways to collaborate with a place and people, before assuming a position of knowing.
[00:23:03 -
Vesna “… those who are aware of themselves, they try to express themselves through their dressing and the way they are thinking. Through their fashion or anti-fashion there is a group of anarchists that dress … so there is a dress code which you could also … in the subculture … which you can see …
I think it’s a kind of devotion, like in your case.
Fette Sans; “devotion” is a great word, I think. On how one can relate to a piece of clothing because they are handed over to you by somebody or because they signify something to a larger community but is still smaller than the larger community. And I think these [fashion] signifiers make [for]that kind of devotional element and wanting to also be seen by certain kinds of people. And I think that’s also the point.
The rest of the evening consisted of us meandering in thought, intimately reflecting on the relations of being and knowing in community, not unlike what I had experienced in Willowvale through the closing listening event that was hosted at the Willowvale Arts Center. Both these events, reflected the parallels of dress languages and attitudes whilst reminding us of everyday teachers, those in our local communities, and how we (as creative practitioners and archivists) can begin to create alternate records of knowledge if we co-create with (k)new thinkers.13 That it is for us to value (k)new knowledges and experiences.
Besides struggling to close my bag as I prepared for the journey back home, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of care, tender interest, new opportunities and fulfilment that the residency and its journeys afforded me. It is Vesna’s drawing to me that offers a visual of my time in Croatia. On textured paper, a collection of circles (irregular in shaping and sizes) are outlined in black and coloured red on the inside. This cluster of circles is captioned “we (are) connected”. The gaps between the circles as they are stacked in and around each other give a beautiful illustration to what happens when we share and listen in together, as different people from many parts of the world, (from/with) our communities. To offer intimacy, listening in deeply, isn’t about smothering the room or the person with your thoughts. Maybe at times it’s just about giving space for something else to move into that room. It might not be a perfect fit. It might just have needed a temporal holding space, but if the invitation is genuine and said with an intent to hold, then what comes in finds itself being a part of a growing collective of thoughts and actions. The parting image is a succinct way of expressing “what happens when we pluralize the place we are thinking from? (Vazquez, 2020)”
1 The curious polyvocal sonic intervention that explores dress sensibilities kwaXhosa was created for the African Fashion Research Institute’s New Narratives 2023 project, The Fold, and supported by the British Council.
2 (H)ome not only speaks to the place where one lives but also to the land, the sensibilities, the rules and sets of wisdom that are offered to you guiding your ways of being with others. It is where our sense of emotional, spiritual and physical well-being are held. Where our rituals and ceremonies are consecrated, held and established to us.
3 The Isolation cells and Mapping Memory form part of the permanent exhibitions.
4 ‘archival f(r)ictions’ is a method presented on by Dr Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja at the ‘Conjunctions of Archives and Public Spheres: Embodied Histories, Memory and Multi-Media Archives in and from Africa’ Conference in Basel, Switzerland (2023). “Archival f(r)ictions in definition is how embodied archives, spacial archives, institutional archives, can be rubbed together … how do the frictions of intimacy … a queer method …that gives us vocabulary. Some of the things done when you are doing archival f(r)ictions is ‘appropriation, sampling, smuggling, hoeing and speculating,’ (Mushaandja, 2023)
5 A quick google search reveals Zagreb to have a population of about 806 341 (2019) whereas Johannesburg has an estimate population of 6 065 000 (2022) and East London an estimate population of 745 855 (2024)
6 These cityscapes that are so different from those in South Africa
8 Ibid.
9 The archival reference materials are a part of CIMOs existing research work titled Locus Artiswhich examines forms of crafts and craft micro-productions, characterized by traditional ways of working in a format from handicrafts to craft technologies used for individual rather than serial production, and where the relationship to work and object affirms hand, integral work process and symbolic power individual work and creative approach (CIMO.hr, 2017)
10 The word has been intentionally written in small caps to shift the position of dominance/focus that it takes in spoken and written form, in history, in presence.
11 amaXhosa
12 The book is a refined collection of “a lifetime of insights from her family and community life, as well as her experience as isangoma. Ancestory is a work of reclamation and remembrance. It draws on timeless wisdom of African forms of knowing and seamlessly integrates history, research and folklore as well as centuries of cultural intelligence. Ancestory is a critique and reflection on the challenges of modern existence and gives context to understand, heal and better honour various aspects of daily life,” (Mkhize, 2022). Through Nokulinda’s book we are situated in an intimate place of learning, being guided through the sensibilities that echo traits zokuhlonipha (language of respect). She does not try to explain rituals and practices that would be infringed upon, exoticized or othered by an audience that lives outside of the worlds of those experiences. She is intentional in expressing to readers that her place is not to be an open door to ubungoma and rituals that are not for ALL to know about, instead she uses the book as a vehicle of sharing the wisdom gained from being in the position of a teacher, healer, elder, daughter, mother and custodian of culture.
13 Those who are new but also those who already know...
* The text was produced within the BOSA - Briefing on Soft Arts residency program and as a part of the CIMO X AFRI creative research collaboration.
* The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the City Office for Culture of the City of Zagreb, for 2024
* Photo: Siviwe James
