Great folks found in Dakar: Camille Turner, @afrofuturist performance artist
Like the greed-filled rube that I am, when I go to an arts festival in Africa, I expect to speak to hundreds of artists. After actually doing it, I realize that I really, really don’t speak French and I failed to attend every DAK’ART 2014 vernissage—the meet-and-greets after sundown (I had an unreasonable fear of mosquitos—and they were out of season). So it turns out that, within my fortnight abroad, I had only one, non-interview-related conversation with an artist—that artist was Camille Turner. It also turns out that a conversation with Camille Turner might actually be worth travelling halfway around the world to have. Here is Camille performing Miss Canadiana in 2011:
Not only is she graceful, intelligent, stunning and engaging, Camille’s journalistic coverage of DAK’ART 2014 in Blog posts and pictures was far better than mine as well—because sisters from Canada are awesome! (Most of my human contact in the form of interesting conversation in Dakar was completely dominated by Afro-Jamaican-Canadian women.) During our much cherished conversation, Camille showed me stills from what I now know as her performance called “The Final Frontier”—it is a wonderful, 21st-century variation of P-Funky specially-designed Afronauts, capable of funkatizing galaxies (with Dogon Spanish-Castle Magic):
Since Camille surely has interesting meetings all of the time (in contrast to my 18 years locked down in corporate America), it may help to remind her where I met her, just in case she has time to read this: I met Camille on the day my hotel swimming pool closed down. I walked to Camille’s hotel (based on the desk recommendation) and met her sitting in the lobby. I recognized her from a previous meeting and quickly basked in her warmth for an incredible 30 minutes or so until some intense professorial-looking guy showed up clearly to meet her in the lobby (see what I mean!). After a few soulful niceties were exchanged by all, I went on to my midday pool time. Thanks Camille!