Talking Turkeys!


Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos' turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don't eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I'm on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys just wanna play reggae
Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
ÒI cannot wait for de chopÓ,
Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey called........ Turkey
He said "Benji explain to me please,
Who put de turkey in christmas
An what happens to christmas trees?",
I said "I am not too sure turkey
But itÕs nothing to do wid Christ Mass
Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
An business men mek loadsa cash'.

Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
In a plate of organic grown beans,
Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
An spare dem de cut of de knife,
Join Turkeys United an dey'll be delighted
An yu will mek new friends 'FOR LIFE'.

Benjamin Zephaniah


Have yerselves a merry little Christmas XXX

Hola..

okay so you probably already heard me harpsing on but just need to say one last time how fantastic Moscow Academy's'Sir Vantes Donkey Knot' was on saturday night. Everything i could have hoped for: multiple person costumes; hilarity with shadows; dancing with giants; creating the theatre set while we watched; transformable costumes, remote control rats;dresses which take up the whole stage. Wonky lovely theatre performed by 20 year old theatre-makers like us lot!! aahh magnifique!

Anyways enough dribble..

oh yeah we got free vodka after the performance..nuff said

Some Beginnings...

I had the dreaded Cross course crit yesterday.I hate the way those words sound together.It sounds like some kind of disease..must be the word crit,critter,cretin.not nice.Anyway it was certainly an interesting experience, even if i was the last presentation on a friday afternoon(most people had lost the will to live by this point). Anyway i finished 'em off! Highlights included Kate Davis calling me a hybrid (well in so many words)and me admitting to talking utter b*ll*$ks (in those exact words.)Pretty damn successful then.

I showed a clip of Jennie Livingston's 'Paris is Burning' (1991) as i'd been thinking about visibility/invisibility in my own work and how we can question the stability of binaries.Also i've been interested in Livingston's position in the film, how we experience her presence or lack of presence, as a white middle-class female director,on watching the film.The idea of the costume piece i had begun, which i showed in the presentation, was to create an ambiguous, intranslatable body. A body, which inhabits an inbetween space between notions of beauty and ugliness.An identity or model, which cannot be pinned down or immediately fixed from the outside.Although i was aware of the problems this would pose in the work, i'm glad i talked about this in the crit, because everyone's reactions really confirmed my suspicions and i suppose it's all part of the whittling down process. So i would say the experience has been useful, as a stepping stone, a transitory stage,even if it seemed a little too early to be talking about my work critically.

As you can tell i'm still getting to grips with this bloggin malarkey, as you can see with the false start below...These photos were taken on the photography induction i took part in today. They are of the jacket with the long-reaching arms which has been in my studio space. Its a little bit surreal, a little bit Magritte...I'm really sick of seeing it in the space however i need something to clothe my dummy in until i get doing some making!!!