That Bird is Singing Us an Invitation to Meet Our Future: Listening to the Call of Sankofa to Develop Memory Practice Methodologies for Performative Practice

This thesis explores the potential of the philosophical, and practical, application of the Akan Adinkra principle of Sankofa, as a memory practice methodology that offers otherwise readings of remembering for lives omitted from or obscured from archives and official documents of history. The common meaning of Sankofa has been defined as get up and go get it” or “go back and get it,” in African Diaspora cultural and memorial practices with other meanings that refer to returning to the source to recover the past and it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.

Represented by a pictograph of a bird with its head turned backwards, gently caring for an egg balanced on its back, Sankofa has been called on to think about how to reconstruct a “fragmented past” (Temple 2010: 127) This thesis explores Sankofa as a memory practice methodology, presenting a reading of the Akan philosophical principle through a black feminist/ decolonial lens. The research considers the potential of Sankofa as a guide in developing methodologies for a performative artistic practice that involves collective learning, remembering, storytelling and the development of communities of support, recovery, and transformation. The intent is to bring a perspective to Sankofa that thinks about how this wise bird holds and nurtures the egg on its back, caring for it and how the birds innate embodied wisdom can help us “to meet the future, undeterred” (Kayper-Mensah 1978:4).

This research draws on an ongoing artistic projects Declaration of Independence and The Queen and the Black-Eyed Squint, both of which use methods of remembering to explore and undo memories of the continuing legacies of colonialism and enslavement.