His hand pulls me through the red clay light, children fall behind. They scream in excitement and a few handsgrapple for my clothes. Faces are all different and I try to establish a short sense of their characters, but there is notime. Suddenly, we are standing in this courtyard. There are a lot of people sitting around. Lambert instructs me to place my shoes by the entrance of one of the houses. We step inside and sit down in a pair of lawn chairs, standing in the corner of the room. Lambert informs me that the chief of Vodun will arrive soon. I sit nervously in anticipation. Dah Boya enters and he is not what I imagined him tobe. He is very simple. Simple and clear. He has a beautiful grey streak of hair which rips through his forehead. There is something very romantic about this look. I bow and then I greet him in the fashion that Lambert taught me. He greets me but he never looks me straight in the eyes. He has a way of averting my glare even though he acknowledges my presence.................

...Hanging on the walls are a lot of old photographs, and people’s faces seem to glare out from its corners........As we journey back through the pathway, Lambert tells me that Dah and himself have made a consultation with the Bokono to discover what lies being my true character. He explains that he wants to be open with me and that the reason behind his actions is that he had had some bad experiences with foreigners before. At first, I am warmed by his honesty and at the same time, it makes me feel quite uncomfortable because I realize that it opens Lambert’s contact to me in another way. I am lost for words. It is as if nothing I could say or do would assure my position or should I say my standing with Lambert. It is almost as if some other form It is almost as if some other form or essence steps right in between us and takes control.

Story Michelle Eistrup



Text by Arine Kirstein

In Appetizer, we are drawn into contemplating the impossibility of being able to access reality as a theme, while in Mami wata, we are thrown into the physical experience of a Voodoo God’s transformation and apparition. Michelle Eistrup and Marika Seidler have been inspired byAfrican film traditions, and the influence of Sengalese Dijbril Diop Mambety has particularly inspired the form of Mami Wata. The unbridled poet in African cinema arrived on the scene in the 70’s, when African film had begun to seriously address issues related to the contemporary state of affairs and social conflicts. Yet Mambety distances himself from realism’s plausible and casual world. Within an avant-garde film vocabulary, he deals with what theoretician Frank Ukadike describes as clashes in African life, collisions between the past, present, colonialism, postcolonialism, tradition and modernity. In many respects, Mambety employs an oral storytellers tradition, and allows animals to become metaphors for human qualities and psychological powers.Thus, the sensual quality and leaps in time and space in his films share affinities with the oral storyteller tradition, which is distinguished by the narrator’s (Griot’s) physical presence throughout history. The Griot’s or storyteller’s physical meeting with historical and mystical events translated into verbal accounts is a pivotal point before a chronological sucession of events. Both of these elements have inspired Marika Seidler and Michelle Eistrup in determing Mami Wata’s form; the crocodile as a symbol of creative energy plotting the film’s story. The voice-over is the initiating element, a narrative, which develops in a space distinct from the visual theme a transitory state manifested in the weightless movements in a swimming pool.

Voodoo Gods are dependent on human movement in order to make their appearance, and contact with the God world occurs by means of the Gods manifesting themselves in humans. Mami Wata is able to appear in the form of either gender, and possesses both masculine and feminine qualities. In order to have a complete image, both sexe must be present, as things "come in pairs" in the world of Voodoo. This relationship is reflected in the two storytellers voices, as they weave in and out of one another during the film. The main plot of the story is the same; a personal account of walking along a riverbank seeing a boy’s glowing body being eaten by a duck. The narrator is both spectator and present at the time of this event. The duck is transformed into a crocodile, and the storyteller notices she/he has reptile skin. Marika Seidler and Carrol P. Dalbert relate the same story, but the difference is apparent in the melody of the accents, Danish- English and Jamaican-English, respectively. The dance between voices anchors and enlivens the course of the film. A course that slowly intensifies to reach a turning point where the visual shows an older man who suddenly seems to be drawn downwards and captured by the water.

A kind of dissolution of forces occurs during which the roles are exchanges for a short time. The female narrator is situated in a room with soft ringing bell tones, she becomes a spectator to the water’s, rocking and changing movements. The film alludes to the fact that the narrative act does not always permit the narrator to go free. In depicting the spiritual, words are not only descriptive, they are a place where events unfold. The Griot and Mami Wata narrator’s possess the quality of relating their past, present and future in their stories, the difference being that these storytellers are transformed into a God as the story get’s told.

This transformation accounts the similar experience of going into trance during a Voodoo ceremony. The setting has changed. We find the story situated in a Danish environment, the spirit/ deity resides in the divers with an intense energy.The films reflect a differentdepiction of the subjective/objective, word/action, body/spirit. There is no moral judgement at stake regarding our own or another cultures view of the world. Rather both are examined in a continual process.

Arine Kirstein

I am walking in the sand on a bright Yellow River bank.
I am Mami Wata.

I pass a small wooden shed. The doors stand wide open. I look through and I see a lake surrounded by redwood pine trees. In the low water a boy’s translucent white body dives smoothly through the hydrophytes. On the brown bottom he meets a duck that swallows him and its body transforms into a
reptile’s skin.

Soft becomes hard, the rough the smooth. Crocodiles have no means to perpetuate their species. Not in spite of, but because of this, they are considered to be the symbol of absolute creative energy.Beside the lake stands a lacustrian; is he mad or a fool? Silence. His green polished stone body bears the weight of a quiver on his left shoulder. He leans towards the center of the lake and shoots a swan. The old feathered carcasses rise out of the water. Back and forth I walk along the riverbank and all I seeis the luminous grains. And I sense two men walking In front of me, dragging a heavy rope behind them. Endlessly yellow sand drifts in front of me, and it seems as if all the road contains is a riverbank.

I stop by a tall tree, a dark purple shadow with heavy roots stretching human high out of the ground and it reminds me of a toadstool turned upside down displaying its belly. I lean against the roots and my body finds rest against its rough bark. I fall into the tree, weightless into a warm bed of water enticing me backwards. I am being rocked in a warm mass of muddy brown. Rocked by the beat of an animal walking, a reptiles long tail wagging from side to side. I sink deeper into its cavity and as it carries me on its back I see the river moving up and down.

We are following the men and their rope dangling in the sand. Somehow I am participating in each step we take, walking upside down. From my armpits a smell of curry and honey evaporates into the air. The fragrance lingers and it reminds me of someone that I met a long time ago. I am numb; I can no longer feel my limbs it is as if we have become one. We stop by the ocean; a young boy with a powdered face is kneeling and praying in the sand to the crocodile. In the distance, stands a fisherman. He blows the conch, a deep hollow tune resonates. The act of devouring is
equivalent to an initiation swallowed up by god.

Story By Marika Seidler

Exhibition View of Appetizer and Mami Wata

EXHIBITION VIEW HOUSING SPIRITS VIDEOINSTALLATION of the video’s Appetizer and Mami Wata, shown at: Take OFF20:01, Museum of Modern Art Aarhus, Dk. 2001. Momentum, Biennal for Young artists, Moss, Norway. 2000.