Late August bank holiday Monday in London is synonymous with
two things: the end of the summer and Carnival. Carnival is the vernacular and
official shorthand for the Notting Hill Carnival.
As the recent BBC documentaries on Carnival note, the date
of the first event is anything from 1962 to ’64 to ’65. Similarly there are a
number of theories on precisely how it started and by whom. So, according to
some calculations, 2014 marked its fiftieth anniversary. To coincide with this
Tate Modern staged the event Up Hill Down
Hall: an indoor carnival.
Up Hill Down Hall showcased Give and Take a new
performance piece by Hew Locke with Batala Samba-Reggae band and
Marlon Griffiths’ piece No Black in the
Union Jack – the title of which was not only a reminder of Paul Gilroy’s
great early work but of course the Rock Against Racism era of protest marches
populated by youth. These works were presented against a backdrop of cut ‘n’
mix improvised sounds created Dubmorphology, (Gary Stewart and Trevor
Mathison), and an architectural design by Gia Wolff.
An intervention orchestrated by Sonia Boyce in conjunction with students
and recent graduates from Central Saint Martins completed the afternoon’s
events.
Sadly I arrived at the tail end of the day. But there were
still streamers on the ground and a thumping beat in the air, still crowds
moving through the Turbine Hall and congregating in chattering groups up on the
mezzanine; a reminder of the temporary nature of the freedom that carnival
affords in London, in the Caribbean, now and back then, way back then, prior to
the 1960’s moment that sparked the Notting Hill original.
Carnival in the Caribbean
- as physical space, theoretical trope, as metaphor - has always
represented a site in which cultures, ideas and concepts collide. It represents
the destabalisation of everyday boundaries, be they rooted in class, gender,
wealth, sexuality, race and, to use Kobena Mercer’s term, the ‘pigmentocracy’
that grew from the hierarchies based on skin tone prevalent in Caribbean
plantation slave society. Carnival is in a sense a ‘borderlands space’. It is a
place of possibility and newness. And it is also the place where the spiritual
and the secular meet. In my paper Reconstruction
Work, presented at the July Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group meeting, I
discussed the creolised aesthetics of the enslaved on the Jamaican plantations,
arguing that individualised clothing became a means of articulating something
of the self that broke free of the then societal constraints. I suggested that that
which could not be articulated verbally was articulated through the dressing
and styling the body, through the performance of identity. Carnivals such as
the Jamaican Jonkannu festival, provided a space in which these refashioned creolised
identities could be experienced and displayed; in a sense, the boundary between
the inner and outer self could be transgressed. Both performers’ and
spectators’ presentation of self could, in my view, be regarded as forms of
vernacular street theatre. I touched on the rude
bwai fastidious self-styling – the clothing, the accessory, the walk, the
pose – suggesting that this too might be seen as a form of strategic
resistance. Each example reflects the transformation that is characteristic of
Carnival. But these transformations, these creolised
cultural expressions, come out of contention not blending. Creativity here emerges
from the friction that occurs as differing and hierarchical cultures, ideas and
concepts clash and rub against one another, generating something new that is
unfamiliar yet familiar. Within this Carnival space there is freedom, albeit a
temporary one.
 |
| Shango and ZeZe Harpp performing. Photo: Christine Checinska |
This week my creative practice as a design consultant took
me to Munich to search for cloth for the new collection. Serpentining my way
through the exhibition hall, I found myself in a tin structure at the centre of
the denim forum, having been drawn there by a hypnotic drumming that had more
than an echo of a steel pan, but with a more muffled ‘dirty’ sound, a spare
sporadic beat bouncing up against the rhythmic strumming of an acoustic Latin guitar;
familiar yet unfamiliar… certainly unexpected in a fashion environment. I was
in the midst of an accidental ‘up hill/down hall’ carnival in miniature! This
wonderfully creolised soundscape was the result of a creative collaboration
between Emoriô Faô, Brazilian guitarist and leader Shango and the
German percussion artist ZeZe Harpp. (Shango, of course, is the god of thunder,
lightning and fire in the Caribbean… and a character often present in carnival
masquerades and certain religious ceremonies) The artists themselves describe
their unique sound as a coming together of African and Indian influences –
perhaps because of my own cultural background, I heard traces of the Caribbean: vintage Afro-Creole mento, cumbia,
jazz. After all, remembering Edouard Glissant, the Caribbean could be regarded
as the home of syncretism.
 |
| Ju Mu at work. Photo: Christine Checinska |
Whilst Shango and ZeZe Harpp played, the contemporary artist
Ju Mu scribbled intricate drawings of mythical creatures directly onto the
walls of the structure; white chalk onto black surfaces. Again, to see this is
remarkable in a rag trade setting. Further, a small team of designers printed
and stitched together oversized t-shirts right there in the space. Unusual. The
invisible boundaries between visual art, music, fashion and textile design were
momentarily blurred within this tin room within a room. The invisible
boundaries between my own compartmentalised creative practices collapsed.
 |
| One of Ju Mu's drawings. Photo: Christine Checinska |
Coming back to the title of this article, there is an
affinity between the essence of carnival highlighted above and our approach to
the Clothes Cloth & Culture Group. Our aim is to bring together voices from
across the spectrum of artists, designers, writers and ‘thinkers’ working with
cloth. We actively seek out cross-cultural perspectives and the viewpoints of
those who are seldom heard. We are continually inspired by the new debates that
emerge from globalisation’s multi-layered yet still at times hierarchical entanglements.
So as the summer closes and we gear up to launch our programme of autumn events
…
Pan on the road! Pan
on the road!
© Christine Checinska September 2014
[1] ‘Pan on the road!’ traditionally shouted at the
start of a carnival procession.
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