If the river’s mouth could speak, what would it say?
Enacting the possibility of river mouths as storytellers and historiographers, artist Abri de Swardt’s Kammakamma is the opening episode of the second work in a moving-image trilogy that visually, archivally and sonically explores the Eerste River in South Africa as witness and carrier of submerged narratives.
Kammakamma, a solo exhibition, opens at GUS on the corner of Bird and Dorp street in Stellenbosch tonight (Friday 8 March) at 18:30 for 19:00.
The Eerste River’s nomenclature derives from Simon van der Stel, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) colonial governor who in 1679 annexed land for settler agriculture at the first (Dutch, eerste) river he encountered after Cape Town, over time erasing the names the river had in indigenous tongues.
Structured in an iterative unfolding towards feature length, Kammakamma (2022-’24) is a synchronised two-channel video projection which transpires along the river through three geographically, temporally and affectively distinct yet interconnected chronicles written by De Swardt, poet and novelist Ronelda S. Kamfer, and historian Saarah Jappie.
Its title draws from slippages between the Khoekhoe language terms for water (‘//amma’) and similitude (‘khama’), with ‘kamma’ absorbed into Afrikaans to mean “make believe”. Through this interplay, Kammakamma considers the river as a source of shifting stories, and as a saturation point for understanding the effects of climate and catastrophe.
Kammakamma was developed through production residencies at GUS and the Nirox Foundation. The project forms part of An Accumulation of Uncertainties, a programme of commissions curated by Sinethemba Twalo of Nothing Get Organised and Amy Watson of POOL.
An Accumulation of Uncertainties is realised as part of the World Weather Network, a global coalition of 28 arts agencies around the world formed in response to the climate crisis. Kammakamma was first exhibited at POOL x Field Station in Cape Town last month.
During March, De Swardt is exhibiting a new large-scale sculpture on the banks of the Eerste River at Spier Light Art, a work which can be experienced in relation to Kammakamma.
