Category: Barbados

FRESH MILK X

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Video shot and edited by Sammy Davis

FRESH MILK X was held this past Sunday, February 3rd 2013, featuring our most recent resident artist, Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe showcasing her new film created during her residency, with a guest performance by Yardie Boy Theatre’s Kupakwashe and actor/director Russell Watson.

Malaika’s film titled ‘Off Track, Moving Forward,’ was a collaboration with Barbadian actor and Managing Director of Mustardseed Productions Varia Williams, and delves into the whirlwind of non-stop thoughts that everyone copes with in daily life, and the possibilities of allowing ourselves to just ‘be’:

Within the context of a global culture of “progress,” this video piece (4:30 sec) poses questions about our internal landscapes, as we navigate this rushing stream of forward motion. In the midst of it all, we often find ourselves spinning in whirlpools of our own thinking: caught up in our past experiences and our potential future ones. What are the repercussions of denying ourselves the opportunity to cultivate a sense of completeness? How do we find satisfaction within the smallest moment, before running off on a trail of other thoughts?

 We are ‘doing’ all the time, often even when we think we are not. We are constantly consuming materials, ideas, other people and their perceptions, with a skilful ease. So ‘connected’ that it becomes easy to confuse solitude with loneliness or boredom. Even in the company of others we often fall under the deadening weight of our doubts, fear and anxiety. We keep ourselves occupied, thinking, but as we feel the familiar murkiness of negativity, what happens when we allow ourselves to pause, become aware and just sit with whatever arises… What are the possibilities then? – Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe

Yardie Boy Theatre presented an excerpt from the play ‘Prisoner,’ also written by Kupakwashe:

Set in prison, John a convicted murderer is on death row being guarded by his older and unforgiving brother Winslow. A 25 minute play full of intensity, graphic in nature and volatile in words. Prisoner is a socio-political play that rides on the themes of ‘big brother is watching’ and ‘being a brother’s keeper.’

There were Q&A sessions held with all of the evening’s participants. As always, it was a pleasure for Fresh Milk to make new connections, and we will miss having Malaika’s presence and energy in the studio – but FRESH MILK X provided a fitting send off!

All Photographs © Dondré Trotman http://www.dondretrotman.com/

FRESH MILK X

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FM X flyer

FRESH MILK X will be held on Sunday, February 3rd 2013, 5:30-7:00pm at the Milking Parlour Studio, St. George (see our About page for directions).

Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe: Final Talk and Screening

Still shots from Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe's filming

Taking the platform at FRESH MILK X is Grenadian artist Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe, Fresh Milk’s current artist in residence. She will be screening her new short film featuring Barbadian actor and Managing Director of Mustardseed Productions Varia Williams (above).

Malaika’s Concept:

This short film will paint a portrait of a woman in her late twenties/thirties and her navigation, not so much through her life, but through her thoughts about her life.  It will be an intimate meandering through the disjointed waters of her daily internal dialogue. As Stuart Hall has written, the past “…is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth.” The site of this interpretation of our past experiences, and those of the people around us, is always located in the present. So, our moments of “now” are constantly occupied with reinterpretations and reshuffling of our past in relation to what we are encountering anew. This film seeks to explore the complex and ever fluctuating relationships that we have with our experiences and the sense of being/ego that is built around these experiences. What snippets of society/family/relationships run through our daily thoughts? What perceptions of our past, and potential future, blur our experiencing of our present moments? How do we find a balance between a blur and a necessary reflection/planning? Can we clear space and opt for neither, for just a moment of experience without constant interpretation?

Yardie Boy Theatre Presents: Prisoner

yardie prisoner

FRESH MILK X will also feature a reading of an excerpt from the play ‘PRISONER’, written by Kupakwashe, Barbadian actor and founder of Yardie Boy Theatre, and performed by Kupakwashe and Barbadian actor/director Russell Watson.

 About Prisoner:

Set in prison, John a convicted murderer is on death row being guarded by his older and unforgiving brother Winslow. A 25 minute play full of intensity, graphic in nature and volatile in words. Prisoner is a socio-political play that rides on the themes of ‘big brother is watching’ and ‘being a brother’s keeper’.

About Yardie Boy Theatre:

Yardie Boy Theatre is a young emerging theatre group dedicating to showcasing Barbadian/Caribbean stories through the medium of theatre. Their works are very social and political and seeks to be the voice of a generation.

NB: This performance contains content of an adult nature and is not suitable for children.

There will be a talk held after the performance and screening with all the participants, where they will engage in conversation about the work and take questions from the audience. Event is free and open to the public.

Reflection on Week 2 of the Fresh Milk residency by Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe

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One of the most incredible aspects of this Fresh Milk residency is the solidarity. This past week not only have  I been able to engage with Annalee Davis, the Director, and Katherine Kennedy, Assistant-extraordiniare but also Holly Byone, Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ARC Magazine, was here collaborating on a grant proposal. The internet offers endless opportunities to build connections but there is something invaluable about sharing physical space with these dynamic women, who are each wells of knowledge and experience. In the midst of all the work that each of us was engaged in, we were able to find moments of pause (and venting and laughter) together. In a world that is focused on productivity, but also requires so much time out of us in order to manifest sustainable change, it can be so easy to downplay the value of taking the time to enjoy the company of the people who help to keep us going.

It has also been a blessing to collaborate with Varia Williams, a brilliant actor and Managing Director of Mustardseed Productions, as the character in the film that I’ve been creating while here in Barbados. I am not sure that I can even begin to articulate what the process of working with Varia has been like. We fell into a really natural rhythm, connecting to the film’s concept in unique ways that often overlapped. I started with an idea and went into a way more experimental direction, which only an actor with her ability to work in a more subtle and bodily way, could have carried. It has truly been a collaboration, her experience as an actor and her vibrant energy brought elements to the process that I couldn’t have conceived.

At some point before arriving here, I was considering what type of project to work on during this residency and set my sights on a narrative short film. As anyone who has ever proposed a project of any kind knows… things rarely go as planned. The more people responded to my initial concept the more I wanted to create a piece that was open and allowed people to interpret it in a way that spoke directly to their experience and so, started to feel myself drawn away from the narrative I had begun to create. Of course, openness is possible within the plot of a narrative. In fact this was recently demonstrated in the Fresh Milk space at Saturday night’s screening of A Hand Full of Dirt. Director, Russell Watson, and Producer, Lisa Harewood, engaged questions after the film and spoke about the ways that plot has connected with people across the globe in diverse audiences. As I watched the film for the first time that evening, I was struck by the nuanced way that they were able to weave together an engaging story that touched on so many things that were both unique to a Caribbean experience but also experienced in similar ways by other people as well: migration, corruption, tourism, masculinity, property ownership and cycles of violence, just to name a few. It was wonderful that an audience of people, who were mostly at Fresh Milk for the first time, were able to talk with the filmmakers afterwards about their own experiences of the film.

As for my piece, I’ve jumped head first into the pool of the experimental. Shooting is complete and the quality is incredible thanks to the equipment I rented through Andrew Jemmott at Caribbean Webcast. Now it is all about editing.

Follow Malaika on Instagram @malaikabsl

Reflection on Week 1 of the Fresh Milk residency by Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe

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I have been at the Fresh Milk Contemporary Art Platform in Barbados for a week now. This is my first experience as a resident artist and I don’t believe there is a better space for me to be incubated at this stage of my journey. As someone who usually spends endless hours moving about to the yoga classes I teach, meetings for The Goat Dairy, interviews for my research on contemporary perspectives on the Grenada Revolution or helping my family with some errand…. it feels incredibly refreshing to spend my time between the Fresh Milk space and the apartment I am staying in just a short walk from here.  This little nook in Barbados is offering me solitude that I have not embraced in a while. I love connecting and sharing with people, it energizes me, but I also know that I deny myself necessary alone time in the midst of nurturing others. Here I’m finding balance, building connections with incredible artists, activists and critical thinkers in Barbados while also carving out space for myself.

 

The challenge that I have set for myself in this residency is to create, in essence, my first short film of this nature. This is the first time I am phrasing it this way, probably because acknowledging the monumental nature of that task has the potential to scare me into inaction. But, I am past that stage. Sure, I have manicou in the headlights kinds of moments, however, as I continue to grow, I can snap out of those moments sooner and meet these beautiful challenges head on. A wonderful friend recently reminded me that often times when we are faced with things that, for whatever reason, arouse fear or anxiety, our instinct is to lean back. But consider the power of leaning in. What happens when we quiet our inner critic and open ourselves up to the risk of utter miserable failure? Well, realistically we are also making ourselves available to the possibility of utterly blissful success, in whatever ways we define success.

 

This week at Fresh Milk has been a lot of brainstorming as I begin to take this film from concept through the stages of development to a final piece. The last time I did this was under extreme circumstances but was actually also in Barbados, at the Caribbean Tales film festival in April 2012. I collaborated with B.l.i.p productions from Jamaica to participate in the 48 hour film challenge. It was such an intense experience to have to conceptualize, script, cast, shoot, edit AND render out a film in exactly 48 hours. On top, of that I didn’t know Henry and Adjani, the creators of B.l.i.p, at all before the festival – but the processes brought us together in the most powerful way. In an experience like that, the time is so tight that you just have to give yourself over to the creative process and we did. People felt it and the film was honored with the award of best director and screened as one of the top entries.  This experience is different of course. I have the time to let this film develop in a unique organic process. I have the support of Annalee, a contemporary artist and director of Fresh Milk, and I am reaching out to my creative colleagues as well. One of the values of this experience is being able to get feedback and critiques. I miss that deeply from my days in the Studio Art program at Smith College. So, this week has been a process of building on previous experiences of ‘leaning in’ and I continue to give myself permission to ‘lean into’ this opportunity that I have been presented with.

Follow Malaika on Instagram @malaikabsl

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