26.03.2022

ritmo volcán by Minia Biabiany

EXTRACT is an online section where we share some of the texts published by Temblores Publicaciones, Terremoto’s publishing house. We present the eighth extract of this section, “The Caribbean Began in Fire and Lives on in Water: A Conversation on Volcanoes” by by Yina Jiménez Suriel y Minia Biabiany, from ritmo volcán by Minia Biabiany. This is the first monographic catalog of the artist, her practice revolves around the perceptual multiplicity of the environment, language and how memories and temporalities can modify our body and life experience. Biabiany’s work has positioned itself as a key meeting place for the critique and analysis of the colonialist process still in force in the Caribbean.

The Caribbean Began in Fire and Lives on in Water: A Conversation on Volcanoes

by Yina Jiménez Suriel & Minia Biabiany

Scroll down for creol version

With the aim of adding a rhythm to this conversation, this reading is accompanied by song lyrics and a poem related to La Soufrière, a volcano located in Guadeloupe. These fragments have been taken from two songs, Soufrière by Arthur H., Daniel Maximin, and Nicolas Repac, and La soufriè by Gérard Nerplat, as well as the poem La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la by Jean-Marc Ferdinand and K’Koustik. They are available for listening here.

L’Échelle

Yina Jiménez Suriel: Once when I was speaking with a friend whose main job is to talk with people, I asked, “What are people looking for when they talk to one another?” We came to the conclusion that people enter into conversations seeking something in others that will give them meaning in their daily life and practice… With this reflection in mind, I approach the conversation with Minia.

Que l’île éclate ou coule demain sous l’océan,
moi je suis terre. Si meurt la terre, je serai feu.
Si meurt le feu je serai l’air.

Soufrière

MB: I grew up and still live in front of La Soufrière, an active volcano in Guadeloupe. I see it smoking, and sometimes in the morning it smells like sulfur. This being is alive, alive, alive. Whenever it decides, it can make the earth tremble… My relationship with that volcano is that it could change my life and that of my family at a moment’s notice. The power of lava engenders a relationship of respect. The magnetic force that lies within it… It reminds us that the island is still growing. It is a guardian at the same time that it is a threat. The history of Guadeloupe was marked by its eruption in 1976, an event that caused the population of the region where the volcano is located, Basse-Terre, to take refuge in the North, Grande-Terre, after they saw the volcano emitting the warning signs of an imminent explosion—which never came to pass.[1] Since then, the island has witnessed a sort of internal migration that has impacted the distribution of the population and the current economic situation in Guadeloupe.[2]

Arété lanmizè, lè uit juiyé vou menm
déranjé-w ou voyé sann ou voyé wòch…
tou lé swa latè ka tranblé épi sé vyé
koud-ren a-w la

La soufriè

YJS: Volcanoes are portals through which the planet’s center can let loose its energy… That is how the planet regulates its overall temperature, and thus they set off a series of relationships that impact all living beings. 

MB: Thanks to them we have land above the sea and gases that form our atmosphere… The Caribbean emerged out of the collision of tectonic plates, their movement, and the eruption of active volcanoes.

YJS: The Caribbean began in fire and lives on in water. It is this idea that inspired the history of mountains—which I consider my life’s project—which is also the history of the waters in the geographic area we know as the Caribbean. Although the volcanoes on the largest islands are considered “extinct,” volcanic mountain chains are responsible for the creation of the entire archipelago. The Caribbean is a succession of mountains separated by water… A double space, whose surface hosts the air and the water, each nurturing life in its own way. 

This history of mountains is also the history of Maroon emancipation. After European colonization, the high mountains of the insular Caribbean provided a place where Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans could devise and organize their resistance and struggle for liberty. It was also in the mountains—or rather through them—that they traced the escape routes from the sugar plantations and the mills. 

Nou tout ké pati, mé ou ké rété
sèten ou ja byen ri nou, lè ou
fè tout moun kouri fou
nou pa jan pansé, on jou ou
té ké lévé

La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la

Essay for toli toli, 2018

YJS: Something that interests me is the subtlety with which you are capable of proposing issues, as you do in toli toli. This piece deals with the systemic elimination of features and memories… I wonder, within a soft, inclusive poetic that plays with the senses, how do you connect these personal and collective experiences to the colonial violence that marks our bodies?

MB: I work with what I don’t understand, and I accept not having control. I believe that this is what gives me the ability to approach themes connected to pain or violence, which I tackle through resonating feelings and by integrating a certain amount of the unknown. For example, when I made toli toli, I was reflecting on the fact that no one mentions how little they know about the place where they live. There are students who don’t know the names of the northern and southern islands in Guadeloupe. One day my mother, who is in her sixties, told me about a song that she sang when she was a child, one I had never heard before. The song moves in such a way that the singers and the listeners seem to be projected into another place, one that is both known and unknown. I associate this with how common it is in Guadeloupe to take what exists outside of the island as the normalized referent. The colonizer’s policy of assimilation has made a systematic model out of this tendency: school is alienating because it constantly uses Europe as a referent. This has the effect of marginalizing the Caribbean. On the other hand, today there is a diverse group of people actively resisting this system of assimilation. I am the daughter of two professors for whom school held a sacred place; for them, studying is essential, since it was thanks to their university education that they were able to get jobs that offered dignified pay. By the same token, my mother has accumulated a ton of books about slavery; she would buy anything and everything that had to do with the subject, no matter what it was.

YJS: As a point of contrast, I think about the processes of repression and the systematic violence of the Dominican dictatorships of the past century, and I associate them aesthetically with violent events, images of blood. Until recently, I considered violence to have strict codes of representation, but when I think about the story of colonialism everything changes…

Sketch in the studio, 2015. Mexico City, Mexico

MB: People think that manifestations of power have always been there, like statues. In Guadeloupe, people think that we have always been in this situation, but we went from being a colony to becoming a department in 1946, and no one ever asked what people thought about becoming French citizens. It was always presented as the obviously better option, and Haiti was often used as a point of comparison to prove the point.

YJS: It is interesting that they use Haiti as a counterexample since its socioeconomic problems are a direct result of the debt the French imposed on the nascent nation as the price for independence… This predicament has only been exacerbated by the US neocolonial apparatus that has been at work in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. It is curious because the construction and cohesion of the Dominican nation-state is also very much based in a narrative about not being Haiti, but it goes in a different direction. In large part, it has to do with the racism of the economically and politically powerful classes on this portion of the island. They deny African heritage and persist in the construction of historical fictions about “the Dominican” that have only served to reinforce capitalist logics of being in the world. 

J’aimerai même pour un court instant
retourner à la mer.

Soufrière

YJS:I think that the ideas we construct around the communitarian, autonomies, or self-growth will come from the relationships we have with the places where we live. We need to learn more and more how to embrace the wisdom of the generations that have preceded us because we can’t only think using the knowledge we acquired in schools. It isn’t going to happen that way.

MB: How can we change expectations? Reintroducing movement into emotional relationships implies creating new spaces of perception and abandoning the Eurocentric judgment that controls us and renders emotion invisible. 

toli toli, 2018. Video, 10.38’

davwa sé vou sèl, mèt a ladèstiné nou ja
konprann…rèspé pou vou !

La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la

Final note: : During the time that it took for the conversations that comprise this text to be transcribed and edited, the La Soufrière volcano in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines began periodic explosive eruptions on April 9, 2021, 42 years after its last eruption. 

***

Lakarayib koumansé adan difé é kontinyé an dlo. Kozé asi vòlkan

Yina Jiménez Suriel & Minia Biabiany

Pou ba kozé-lasa on kadans, lèkti-la ka fèt ansanm èvè dotwa pawòl a chanté é èvè on poèm alantou a vòlkan Lasoufriyè, Gwadloup. Sé mòso-lasa sòti adan dé chanté : Soufrière a Arthur H., Daniel Maximin, é Nicolas Repac, épi La soufriè a Gérard Nerplat ; tin osi poèm La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la, a Jean-Marc Ferdinand é K’Koustik , ou pé kouté-y èvè code lasa.

Yina Jiménez Suriel: On jou an té ka palé èvè on zanmi prèmyé okipasyon a-y, sé bokanté pawòl èvè moun ; an mandé-y : « Ka moun ka èché lèwvwè yo ka kozé ? Nou rivé konprann, séla ki ka bokanté pawòl, yo ka èché adan dòt moun sa ki pé ba-yo lèsplikasyon é dirèksyon adan vi a yomenm touléjou, adan mannyè yo ka viv… Lè an rivé konprann sa, an vin owa Minia pou mwen kozé èvè-y.

Que l’île éclate ou coule demain sous l’océan,
moi je suis terre. Si meurt la terre, je serai feu.
Si meurt le feu je serai l’air.

Soufrière

MB: An lévé é an ka viv owa Lasoufriyè Gwadloup, on vòlkan ki pa étenn. An ka vwè-y ka voyé lafimé, é délè, lématen, tin on lòdè souf. Sé kon moun ki vivan, vivan, vivan. Lè i vlé, i pé fè latè-la tranblé… Jan-la an liyanné èvè vòlkan-lasa, sé davwa nenpòt lè i pé boulvèsé vi an mwen é ta fanmi an mwen. Sé rèspé ka liyanné-nou, pas ou ka konprann fòs a magma-la. On fòs manyétik ki byen la… I ka fè-nou sonjé lilèt-la ka kontinyé lonji. I ka pwotéjé men anmenmditan i danjéré. An 1976, vòlkan-la pété é sa lésé mak adan listwa a péyi Gwadloup : popilasyon-la i ka rété p’asi anba asi lilèt-la — Bastè — té obljié kouri séré p’asi anho — Granntè — , davwa vòlkan-la té ka fè konsi i té toupré pété. Men sa pa j’en fèt.[3] Dépi sa, moun a péyi-la kontinyé déplasé an sans-lasa ; sa boulvèsé jan popilasyon-la ka okipé èspas-la, é aktivité ékonomik a téritwa Gwadloup.[4]

Arété lanmizè, lè uit juiyé vou menm
déranjé-w ou voyé sann ou voyé wòch…
tou lé swa latè ka tranblé épi sé vyé
koud-ren a-w la. 

La soufriè

YJS: Vòlkan, sé koté ka wouvè pou anmitan Latè rivé lagé énèji. Kidonk, planèt-la pé jéré tanpérati jénéral a-y é, an bout, sa ka kréyé onséri liyannaj chak vivan asi Latè bizwen.

MB: Sé gras a yo si ni téritwa anho a lanmè-la, é si ni gaz ki mofwazé pou kréyé atmòsfè an nou… Lakarayib, jan i yé la, sé rézilta a plak ki kontré, ki déplasé, a vòlkan vivan ki pété.

YJS: Lakarayib koumansé adan difé é kontinyé an dlo. Sé la Listwa a montangn sòti — é, pou mwen, sé pwojé a vi an mwen —, é sé osi listwa a dlo ki adan èspas jéografik la nou konnèt-la, Lakarayib. Magré vòlkan a sé pli gran lilèt-la ja près « étenn », kanmenmsa yo ka fòmé chenn montangn vòlkanik, é sé sa ki ka fè bannzil-lasa. Lakarayib, sé rézilta a onséri montangn anmitan dlo… On èspas ki andélidé, anho ka pran lè é anba ka pran dlo ; é yochak an jan a-yo sé nich a lavi.

Listwa a montangn lasa, sé osi listwa a émansipasyon a Nèg-mawon. Dépi kolonyaliz éwopéyen, montangn a lilèt Lakarayib, ki ho, sé la prèmyé pèp a réjyon-la èvè Afriken ki té anbajouk kabéché é òganizé larézistans, é défann libèté a yo. Sé adan sé montangn-lasa — pou travèsé yo — chimen té ka trasé pou fannkann é chapé adan bitasyon é lizin a sik. 

Nou tout ké pati, mé ou ké rété
sèten ou ja byen ri nou, lè ou
fè tout moun kouri fou
nou pa jan pansé, on jou ou
té ké lévé

La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la

YJS: Dapré mwen, sa ki entérésan, sé padavwa dousouman ou annéta fè moun konprann désèrten poblématik, kon adan toli toli. Ouvraj-lasa fèt pas tin on sistenm  ka néyantizé mak a sonjé… An ka mandé-mwen : vou, poétik a-w ka sèvi èvè tousa ki sansasyon – é piplis tousa ki dous –, kijan ou ka asosyé sa chakmoun ka viv é sa konminoté-la ka viv, ansanm èvè vyolans kolonyal la ka travèsé kò an nou la ? 

MB: An ka travay èvè sa an pa ka konprann é sa an ka asèpté pa kontwolé. Dapré mwen, sé konsa an ka rivé palé désèrten tématik ki ni doulè oben vyolans adan ; men pou sa, an ka fè diféran sans sonné, é adan an ka mèt osi sa an pa konnèt. Pou ègzanp, lè an fè toli toli, an tèt an mwen an té ni lidé a tout silans-la i ka pézé la lèwvwè ou pa konnèt koté-la ou ka rété la. Tin étidyan ki pa annéta di ki lilèt ki o nò, kilès ki o sid. Épi on jou, manman-mwen, ki ni swasant lanné, palé ban-mwen asi on chanté i té ka chanté lè i té timoun ; an pòtékò j’en tann-li. Chanté-la ni on ti balan, é i ka èché voyé sé moun-la i ka chanté-y é kouté-y la on dòt koté yo konnèt oben yo pa konnèt. Pou mwen, sé kon lè onlo moun ni lidé sa ki nòwmal, sé tousa ki andéwò Gwadloup. Kivlédi, kolonizatè-la mèt doubout on asimilasyon ki ja vin on modèl byen chouké an lèspri a moun : lékòl-la ké démouné-w, é ka di-w sé Léwòp ki référans a-w ; kifè Lakarayib two lwen sa i ka fè fòs a-y. Anmenmditan, tin diféran moun ki ka doubout kont sistenm a démounaj lasa. An sé pitit a dé pofésè ki ka voyé lékòl-la ho-ho-ho ; pou yo toulédé, fò ou té fè étid, davwa sé linivèsité ki fè si yo rivé touvé on travay péyé kon i fo. An menm balan-la, manman-mwen akimonslé onlo liv asi lèstravay ; i té ka achté tousa i té ka jwenn asi sijé-lasa.

Essay for toli toli, 2018

YJS: Anmenmditan, an ka sonjé jan chakfwa sé diktati dominiken la brizé-krazé moun pannan syèk pasé la ; an tèt an mwen, sa k’ay èvè moman fò, èvè zimaj a san ki maké larèl èstétik la. Jis a konyéla, an té ka konprann vyolans toujou rèprézanté on mannyè rèd, men lè an ka pran tan plonjé adan rakontaj kolonyal la, an ka vwè a pa sa menm, okontrè…

MB: Moun ka konprann pouvwa-la toujou montré-y, té toujou la, akondi istati. Gwadloup, moun ka konprann nou toujou té adan sitiyasyon-lasa ; men nou té koloni, é nou vin dépatman an 1946. É yo pa j’en kouté sa pèp-la té ka pansé asi kèksyon-lasa, ès i té vlé vin sitwayen fransé, davwa yo fè-y révé on vi ki té ké pli bèl, é souvantfwa yo sèvi èvè Ayiti kon ègzanp alanvè.

YJS: Sa entérésan vwè Ayiti kon ègzanp alanvè, parapòt a poblèm ékonomik é sosyal Éta-nasyon lasa ka jwenn jòdijou ; poudivré, tout sé pwoblèm-lasa sé Lafrans jistèman ki kréyé yo lè i fòsé péyi-la péyé on dèt pou gannyé endépandans a-y… Èvè, machin néokolonyal a Mériken vin apiyé asi sé poblèm-la pli fò ankò, dépi koumansman a xxyèm syèk-la jis a konnyéla. Sa ki komik, Éta-nasyon dominiken konstwi é ka kontinyé doubout asi menm rakontaj-lasa ki ka di yo pa Ayiti. Men yo, sé piplis asi lidé rasis, davwa yo ka dérifizé afrodésandans ; é sé séla ki ni pouvwa ékonomik é politik, adan pati a lilèt lasa, ki mèt doubout fiksyon istorik ka rakonté « ka ki dominiken », é ka défann pwennviz kapitalis asi jan moun toupatou dwètèt viv. 

J’aimerai même pour un court instant
retourner à la mer.

Soufrière

YJS: Pou mwen, sa nou k’ay konstwi ké annakò èvè lidé a travay ansanm-ansanm, é sa noumenm an nou ka menné oben ka jéré ; sé lidé-lasa ké dépann an ki mannyè nou ka woulé èvè koté-la nou ka viv adan-y la.

Nou bizwen aprann sanblé konésans a sé jénérasyon-la ki té avan nou la — piplis chakfwa —, davwa nou pé ké doubout èvè sa nou aprann linivèsité. Sa pé ké konsa.

MB: Kijan nou ka rivé chanjé sa nou ka èspéré ? Woumèt émosyon an mouvman, sa vlé di kréyé dòt èspas pou gadé é risanti, é lagé pwennviz éwosantrik la ka fòsé-nou asèpté larèl ki pa tan-nou é ki ka véglé sansasyon an nou.

davwa sé vou sèl, mèt a ladèstiné nou ja
konprann…rèspé pou vou !

La Soufriyè, Vyé madanm la

Nòt pou bout: Toupannan kozé-lasa té ka maké é édité, vòlkan a Senvensané-Légrènadin, Lasoufriyè, koumansé pété akontinyé dépi jou 9 avril 2021, apré i rété 42 lanné ka dòmi. 

Find this full text in the printed version of  ritmo volcán by Minia Biabiany here.

Notes

  1. Editors’ note: The eruption of gases and ash from La Soufrière never led to a magmatic explosion. However, it contaminated the water and land in the surrounding area and set off several earthquakes that disrupted the ecological conditions in the city.

  2. Before this, Basse-Terre was the most active economic center on the island. However, it would never be so again because its port was relocated and many people remained on the other side of the island. Guy Gabon, a friend and artist, is working on a feature film about the communities that were affected by the eruption, those who were forced to move at the time and those who still live there. After 1976, an observatory was built in the mountain range, where you can watch this active volcano’s every breath. We will never know how long it will be before it wakes up again.

  3. Nòt a sé éditè-la : Lasoufriyè voyé gaz é sann, men sa pa rivé jis an faz magmatik la. Magrésa, i sali dlo-la é tè-la, é plizyé tranblanntè fèt, ki boulvèsé kondisyon ékolojik an vil-la.

  4. Avan sa, sé té Bastè ki té potomitan adan ékonomi a lilèt-la ; men i pa j’en woupran plas douvan a-y, davwa yo déplasé pò-la, é onlo moun rété lòt koté a lilèt-la. Gi Gabon, ki sé on zanmi artis, ka réyalizé on lonmétraj asi sé krèy moun-lasa ki déplasé an tan-lasa é ki ka rété la toujou. Jòdla, tin on òksèvatwa yo konstwi apré 1976, asi chenn montangn la. Yo ka gadévwè chak ti souf a vòlkan vivan lasa. Nou pa sav konmen tan i ké pran pou lévé poubon.

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