UNTITLED (THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE)(2000)

a slide/audio installation

Fine Arts Building at North Carolina Central University

"Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake
was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string."

 

Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

 

This project juxtaposes still images from director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's 1979 film Alien with text from Olaudah Equiano's 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. I envision Boladji Badejo (the Nigerian art student and actor who played the alien) as a nexus between Dan O'Bannon's saga (influenced by Joseph Conrad) and Equiano's real life epic. The sound source for this project is a recording of ocean waves breaking against the Elmina slave castle in Ghana.