A Story of Time (2023-2024) Installation film and quotes

“Collective memory is not a vast well that exists separately from individual people. It is the sum total of the personal memories of each person. In other words, for a village, a tribe, and a culture to remember, each individual must master the ability to remember the knowledge that lives in his or her bones.” 

“Like a forest in which countless beings find their home, stories are places where each of us can find a home. The home in the story is the image we hang on to and identify with. It represents our address in the city of the story. This home can change from story to story and from one day to the next. This is because as the circumstances of our lives change, so too does the place we inhabit stories.”   

“An ability to locate oneself even in the middle of chaos and confusion.”

“Nature is the foundation of indigenous life. Without nature, concepts of community, purpose, and healing would be meaningless. The idea of a person born with a purpose, a purpose that needs to be supported by an active community presence, and the idea of working with subtle energies for balance and healing would be only grandiose notions in the absence of nature as the playground, as the school where the children can play and study.” 

“If something in us must change, spending time in nature provides a good beginning.” 

“Who we are appears spontaneously within myth if we allow ourselves to be open to it.” 

Malidoma Patrice Somé 

“Twi, the Akan Language, has no word for the activities described by the English word, ‘prayer’. Foreign religions had to improvise their word for ‘prayer’. Muslims use ‘Nyame fre’ (God calling or calling God), and Christians, mpaebo or mpaeyi (breakup or removal of curses). Except for the one congregational prayer, called ‘Nsa Guo’, Akan worship of Nyame is informal and non-ritualistic. They see no need for cathedrals, mosques or temples because no building can contain the Infinite.”

“Spirituality is defined as the totality of rituals, beliefs, practices and behaviour patterns perfected by a community of people throughout the passage of time, to get in touch with not only the ultimate source of all energy, but also energy configurations which include themselves, water, plants, animals, the sun, the moon, air, etc. For the Akan, the prize at the end of these endeavours, is to reconnect himself with his power source, his own reality.” 

“The body of instructions Akans use to train their young is the Anansesem. However, the instructions are about morality and good citizenship and are not religious as such. The archetypal hero of the epic, Agya Kwaku Ananse, symbolises experience (agya) in this world.” 

“It is true that the family is important to the Akan…However…what the Akan takes to be good is achievable within the family as well as outside it. The ancient sages admonish, ‘Dee abe beto biara ye mpoye mu.’ This means, ‘Whichever terrain the uprooted palm-tree falls in, is the right place to tap it.’”

Kofi Bempah

A Story of Time 

I’ve been nurturing an interest in pre-modern forms of spiritual practice from regions in the Global South for a few years. Maybe as an antidote to dis-ease. 

Coming to the Routing Diaspora Histories project as an opportunity to move closer to older spiritual knowledge from West African regions, where part of my ancestral heritage lies, allowed me to apply creative practice to what I was reading, and to embody some of the connections I was making between the teachings in the texts and my own environment.

A Story of Time serves as documentation of a creative process which came out of readings on indigenous West African cosmology and spiritual practices: The Healing Wisdom of Africa, and Of Water and the Spirit, by Malidoma Patrice Somé and Akan Traditional Religion, The Myths and the Truth, by Kofi Bempah. 

What emerged for me was a moving meditation through nature over a period of time. 

The creative process was in the walking through nature, observing and integrating what came up. The film is simply a memory of that: a by-product of these visits to a local park over a period of 4 months, between October 2023 and February 2024. You’re invited to sit in this space and listen for a while too. 

Vanessa Ansa works as part of a small team of cultural producers in The South North CIC. Her personal interests span art in various forms. She is working on ways of being which allow for growth, learning and movement.

Read her reflections on working with the research questions in Project Learning.