The Place of Shade

Anthony Morton

At first, the plan was simple — to be home by Christmas. To begin to view the very concept of home as built upon nostalgia. Imagining home is a pastime of any immigrant. If, as Breton suggests, ‘The imaginary is that which tends to become real,’ what were our imaginings bringing to life? The Place of Shade is an artistic research inquiry into the contemporary wake of the Norwegian presence in South Africa. Norwegians began operating within the British colonial framework around 1840 — the same period as the migration to America. Lutheran missions, whaling, farming, business and family characterise this almost 200-year Afri-Norge diasporic heritage. It has been almost entirely overlooked in visual culture, until now. Their legacy remains an integral component of the city and the province's socio-cultural fabric to this day. This exposition is just one expression within the broader scope of this ongoing project. Here, we on the one hand reflect on our preliminary research, methodology and fieldwork from a fictional standpoint — a kind of meta-methodological reflection — and, on the other hand, we address our Afri-Norge subject matter head-on. To achieve this, we narrate Ray Franz and Anthony Morton’s part in the initial fieldwork through the fictionalised perspectives of two PhD students at The University of Bergen — Vincent Dibble (RSA) and Bjarne Karlsen (NOR) — who leave their shared office to undertake an expedition which parallels ours, travelling to KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. This journey is set in the penumbra of the seismic socio-political events of 1999: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The South African Arms Deal, Case no. 4138/98, and the looming global spectre of Y2K. Dibble, an occidental eschatologist and accidental apocalypse-hunter. Bjarne, a philosophical cosmologist and photography enthusiast. This exposition is imagined as the pair's pin board, suspended upon the expanse of their office wall upon returning to Norway. Behind them it hangs, a silent curation of fever dreams, as they weave theses into existence, their gaze drawn through the window onto the sprawling canvas of Bergen's cityscape.

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