roots tangle round clouds

The artist declares with increasing exasperation that they are hungry whilst wearing a jacket completely covered in packets of popcorn – specifically the ‘Lightning’ brand of popcorn that is very popular across Southern Africa. They search everywhere for something to eat to no avail. Reaching the pinnacle of hungry hysteria, they reach into their pockets and find a single packet of Lightning popcorn. Eating it ravenously the words ‘popcorn packet pocket‘ are repeated over and over in a devolving sound poem. A golden spoon is used to dig a sequence of small holes in the earth and the popcorns to have fallen to the ground are planted like seeds. They are watered. We wait. A long golden thread is uncovered and pulled from the ground – a stroke of lightning freshly cultivated. A lecture begins on the cultivation of lightning seeds and how energy is always moving, never ends. The artist asks to see the thumbs of the entire audience, expresses how the energy to move a thumb and for a lightning strike are ultimately the same inexplicable force, only thumbs are more deadly. An audience-wide thumb-war is facilitated, followed by a group grieving meditation for all the thumbs lost too soon. There is never a moment when lightning is not striking somewhere on Earth.

Performance produced on the occasion of Bushfire Festival, eSwatini, May 2025. Informed by work as artist in residence at Wits School of Arts and Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory.