Incubate
Weedpatch, California Oct-Nov 2006
We arrived in Weedpatch mid October - just as the last crops were being harvested. Our host organisation Arts Council County Kern (ACK) introduced us to key people such as the county supervisor (who provided us with office facilities in the town) and members of the Oaxacan community threw us a party the evening we arrived. We were overwhelmed by the community leaders and volunteers who offered their support to the project and soon realised how essential these 'translators' would be, particularly as the Oaxacan community spoke Mixteco (a verbal language, unchanged from C15th – spoken by indigenous population of the Oaxaca region of Mexico).
One thing that was immediately apparent was the 'lack' of Public Space and places were the community would be able to 'happen upon us' or interact with any intervention we might stage. This posed a huge challenge for us and meant we had to be much more proactive in seeking people to interact with us - and find out what would be the most suitable process.
Weedpatch, California Oct-Nov 2006
We spent the first weeks mapping the area, getting to grips with the geographic location and gaining an understanding of the transient community (seasonal workers) and it's historical, agricultural, cultural and social history. We met with different organisations, who often mirrored government bodies, initiatives that we were familiar with in the UK e.g. 'HeadStart' the US equivalent of Sure Start etc. We were also keen to go beyond the official statistics and 'identified' needs to meet with and talk to as many residents from different cultural and economic backgrounds, in order to get a good understanding of the place. This was acheived relatively easily because of our 'English' accents and our desire to explore the area 'on foot'. Both of which provoked curiosity from the residents who wanted to know why we had chosen to spend time in Weedpatch and why we were not car bound.
Having spoken to a number of residents and realising that the different communities lived side by side but did not necessarily communicate with each other - partly due to the different languages and dialects being spoken. We decide to focus on the creative use of translation - inviting people to tell us their stories. We visited people at their homes,schools and places of work, meeting people in shops, through neighbours and word of mouth. The stories were diverse but many told us of how they came to live in Weedpatch, experiences that they had had - political, commercial, as children or workers, freedom and ill health. We quickly built up an archive of stories - all recorded in their Mother tongue - building up a colourful portrait of the area through it's vivid narratives and textured voices.
Breakfast at the Worley's
Click to play various soundbytes
Meanings Significado - USA
Parts of these stories were translated into Spanish, Mixteco and American - so that each story could be shared - using the voice as our medium to avoid the heirachy of the written word. We worked with a whole range of translators using a variety of methods, from the spontaneous simultaneous translation thatreflected the gesture and tone of the original through to painstakingly transcribed narratives - grammatically corrected. These fragmented narratives became transformed and transmogrified as words were misunderstood or the equivalent could not be found. These individual sound bytes (along with their translations) were put together on a CD and could be played back at random - so that their stories could be shared.
We organised two events to disseminate the work before we returned to the UK. The work was presented as an audio installation, a visual image text piece - 'A Weedpatch story’ and the CD was given to all participants in a specially designed handfolded origami envelope. The first was a formal seminar where we presented the work and discussed the project and our findings.
origami CD cover
The second took the form of a celebratory party in the same venue that we had had our welcome event - to which we invited all the paricipants, their friends and families. We had a British style buffet with tea and sandwiches - to extend our cultural exchange and to thank those who had fed us with cactus soup and sweet tamales. It was a great success and people continued to share new stories...as each 'group' became aware of how 'Weedpatch' had brought them together...as each group followed in the others footsteps as they worked in the fields and aimed to create a better life for themselves and their future generations.
Each participant was given a copy of their original story and a copy of the Meanings Significado CD. We also left copies for the local library - to add totheir archive, which has an excellent slection of books and first hand accounts of the Dust Bowl and the various migrant communities who have tended the fields.