A live-moving installation performance If Humans Were Earth, by artiste Oluwabukunmi Olukitibi, disrupted and confronted Nigerians on their attitudes and habit to indiscriminate waste disposal.
In the early hours of a Friday morning, before the rush hour traffic at Berger and Wuse Market, a group of young people, made their way briskly from Utako market to their destination – Wuse Market. Their trek is intermittently halted for the group to pin wastes on the central figure, a young dancer, Oluwabukunmi Olukitibi in tailored pant and buba made of cement bags.
Olukitibi, an Abuja-based artiste, is exploring humans (Nigerians) relationship with mother earth, around three philosophies – “from dust we come, to dust we return”, shock, and the Aiyeloja principle – “the world is a marketplace.”
With the performance she questions, “If humans were earth, what would it look like?” “If I were earth, or the earth is a loved one or someone I admire, how would I treat that person? Would I drop trash on them or on myself? Since earth is where I live, the planet that holds me and my dreams why treat it lesser than I’d treat myself, a sibling or a friend?”
And so, on a Friday morning, when people least expect it, she is disrupting their activities, (for a brief moment) shocking them into reflection, with a visual representation of the consequences of their attitude to indiscriminate waste disposal on the society.
“I take walks quite often; and walking around the city of Abuja, I see a lot of dirt. I always wondered why it cannot be different. I started to contemplate how to engage this topic in my personal practice of dance and creative installation. But in a way that it becomes relatable to people. That is, not just a performance on stage, but a performance that can engage responses and reactions of people. The idea comes from wanting to do something that will interrupt, confront and cause a certain type of reflection. To create subtle memory that brings people to question.”
Olukitibi also approaches the performance from a popular ethnic saying ‘Aiyeloja’ meaning “The world is a market place,” which contextually refers to the temporality of life on earth. And she is asking, “if the earth is temporal – a place of non-permanency, of meetings and crossings”, why are humans determined to leave it worse than we met it for the next generation?”
To this last question, the response lies with the artiste’s earlier statement that “there is no ownership of the earth.” That lack of feeling of ownership, creates a nonchalance in humans to mistreat the earth, since it’s not their personal or family heritage.
Hence, the attitude of some Nigerians placing the responsibility of proper waste disposal solely on government, which is not just wrong but dismisses their individual responsibility.
“I know, like people said today, government hasn’t provided this, or done that. But I think it’s also a matter of attitude and culture. Even if they were trash cans available, if you don’t have the habit of proper waste disposal, you won’t do it,” said Olubukunmi.
“It’s been very enlightening for me,” said Art designer, director and performance participant, Yemi Davis. “I am a “seeing is believing” kind of person. I needed to see the visual representation of how much damage we are doing to the planet. As we walked and picked trash to pin on her body, she looked like a walking mess. I call all of us to be very conscious of how we treat our waste. We must make sure we do our part, individually, to ensure that our earth is safe for everybody.”
Of course, let’s not forget the role of corporate organizations or multinational companies’, another participant and German expatriate, Felix Wünsche said. “I think we shouldn’t forget the responsibility of the organizations that provide all these wastes. There should be a lot of responsibility on these corporations not just individuals. This type of artistic performance is good, it gets people thinking and talking about the issue. And when people start thinking it’s the first step to change. Maybe, these drivers will demand, at some point, that the government provide trash cans for them.”
