As If the World Had No West tells of the journey of a young woman who travels through the desert and who, through her relationship with the Mirabilis, ancient plants, listens to the cosmos. She listens to her elders, the earth, fire and air. The drought calls the rain, the ashes show the way, the plants tell her the stories of colonization, of the beginning of the world when the desert was still scrubland and there were trees and flowers. She tries to find out where the water is and searches for this universe by going through colonial ruins now buried by time and sands and lost in the middle of the sea.
As If the World Had No West proposes the creation of new landscapes by investigating hidden, yet metaphysically present ecologies in Angola, deconstructing western understandings of memory, history, and land. The project enquires in the work of anthropologist Augusto Zita’s investigations in the Namibia desert, in which he devised a nature-oriented space/time system having light as a third dimension. This work will bring forward this research, while deconstructing the hegemonic understanding of land and territory, looking at the land as a place of mutual care, liberation history and memory.
As If the World Had No West reveals non-western configurations of landscape, and the histories and memories it holds, through film and photography.