Landship Valiant Star (2023)
Landship Valiant Star is a body of work spanning installation, video, sculpture, social practice and dance performance based on research into the history of the Barbados Landship. The Landship is a socio-cultural movement in Barbados, established by the Black working class for collective survival in the harsh racial and economic climate before and after the abolition of slavery. Organized as community groups based on naval ships, members saved collectively in a practice known as “susu” and performed masquerade with dances that depict the movement of the ship and its crew. As Barbados became the world’s newest republic in 2021, the project sets the spotlight on the Landship tradition as a potential model for nation-building and asks the question: How can Landship be reimagined for today? Inspired by the tradition’s basis in grassroots community-led problem-solving, the work explores how the combination of actual events with speculative family history might create a historical fiction that brings Landship into a new relationship with the artist and by extension, the viewer.
The installation has been presented at the Worth Ryder Gallery at University of California Berkeley and the Murphy Cadogan MFA Awards Exhibition at SomArts Gallery, San Francisco.
Materials:
Reclaimed wood, satin ribbon, printed fabric, vinyl wall text, dried seamoss, framed digital print, indigo textiles, conch shell, silk flowers, glass vase and vessels, clear glass gems, seashells, candle, bottled Florida water, water, reclaimed naval uniform and live performance, Variable Dimensions.
Credits:
Concept, creation and performance: Valencia James
Maypole woodwork by: Samuel Wildman
Graphics by: Wesley Taylor
Original music for live performance: Stefan Walcott
Music for maypole dance: Wayne “Poonka” Willock
Performance documentation: Kavena Hambira
In Search of Landship
(excerpt 2:24 mins)
(2023)
Digital video
Duration of full video: 13:30 mins
In the summer of 2023, I received grants from the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Black Studies Collaboratory to conduct research in Barbados on the Landship. In this phase of research, I was thinking about what it means to pass on a tradition, and how this might be thought of as a technology in its own right. Thus, I decided to create a video project portraying the transmission of oral history and embodied practice. The video features cultural scholar, choreographer and adviser to the Barbados Landship Association, Dr. John Hunte as culture-bearer and myself as the apprentice, in a session where I interview him and received instruction in the intricacies of Landship dance. Through Dr. Hunte’s help, I was able to meet and interview senior lifelong members of the Barbados Landship Association, including the movement’s new leader, Admiral Elton Greaves. These recording sessions occurred in the Landship’s headquarters, known as The Dock, the traditional meeting place where members organized themselves and practiced the dances.