ukobola lina/when do you return?

Abstract

ukobola lina/when do you return? is an 18-minute performance film that archives the origin story of the Bagisu people and attempts to decipher the riddle of a family’s intertwined histories within the diaspora. Developed through methods of process cinema, the immersive performance combines eco-processed 16mm film and digital projections onto mosquito netting and traditional fabrics, live writing, and sound. We scan for fragmented radio frequencies that only reveal themselves in waves. Expressions of light, time, space and ritual must take place as the work becomes a test of memory to recover hidden wisdoms. I decipher what I can through performance of writing, documenting, translating, asking, and I am reminded, agenda gy’amanyi tazibiriwa budde / that one who travels to a familiar place does not worry about arriving in the dark, and that it is within these surreal abstractions of words, images, and sounds that my identity, culture, language, love, grief and hidden wisdoms are irrevocably entangled in non-linear time and space.