Po B. K. Lomami
aksanti 33 (part 2)
March 2nd- March 4th, 2023
Event Description
A matriarch just passed away. A medical treatment was about to expire. If we—with our painful bodies and winding minds—are not profitable, we are forever expendable. / I felt like she knew. She knew it would be impossible. We were not profitable, but we were not expended anymore. For few years. Until then. Until the announced return of the impossible. / I was consumed by the prospect. But she left before then. I felt broken. Forever ignorant and incomplete. I felt relieved too. She would not have to live the impossible again. / She took my medication under my name. It became a link, a feeling we were both living. We were both living. Now I have two different but connected griefs in me. And I will have to re-learn to make it all possible. / I will recite her name until then starts. We can rest and dream until then. We can imagine and care until then. We can create memories and futures until then. / Then, we will feel. // aksanti 33 (part 2) is a three-day participative performance, welcoming up to 33 people to share an intimate space in the white cube of the gallery. We will practice visitation, rest, and sharing of care to address pain, grief, and medication. This is an invitation to feel and explore the work of time on our bodies, stories, and relationships. We will hold and archive this space-time together.
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aksanti 33 (part 2) Review
Text by Cécilia Bracmort
aksanti 33 (part 2) is a participatory and immersive performance that took place over three days at the FOFA gallery from March 2 to 4, 2023. Produced by artist Po B.K. Lomami, this work draws from the artist’s personal experiences, and questions many of today's political and social issues.
Drawing on the artist’s own medical history, aksanti 33 (part 2) addresses Lomami’s disability and resulting pain. At the centre of this performance is the existence of a little-known drug: Valtran. The composition of this drug includes both a molecule of painkiller and its antidote (1), in order to prevent addiction for its users.
This is a disconcerting revelation: at a time of major opioid epidemics, particularly in Canada, this product could prevent countless tragedies. Pfizer, the creator of this miracle drug, nevertheless decided to quietly discontinue its distribution in 2021, due to low profitability. Available only in a few countries, notably Belgium (where Lomami is from), the expiry date for Valtran’s last vials was at the end of March 2023. aksanti 33 (part 2) took shape in response to this urgent situation. In contrast to this purely mercantile decision, Lomami instead creates a space for care and sharing, offering a temporary antidote to the indifference of pharmaceutical companies and the anxiety that the drug’s disappearance is causing in their life and the lives of thousands of others.
The first stage of the participatory performance is an online discussion with Lomami. This is an opportunity to find out more about the history of the project, but also to ask questions about the experience. Taking part implies a contract of trust and "sharing a little risk with [the artist]," as participants are invited to take a dose of Valtran and then share a moment of relaxation with the artist and 3-4 other participants for a period of 3 hours. After confirming, the artist sends the final details to ensure the comfort of their guests.
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Here's a recollection of my personal experience: On D-Day, I find myself in the waiting room. I watch a screen where the cathode-ray snow echoes the snow falling outside. I hear laughter and voices without understanding what's going on inside the gallery. Eventually, I enter the room and introduce myself to the other participants. The performance is largely defined by a play of visibility and invisibility. The layout of the space plays on this contrast. Parts of the gallery are shrouded in half-darkness, while others are bathed in brighter light, as if to distinguish between spaces for rest and spaces for experimentation. Here's the moment of truth: the artist and I walk over to a brightly-lit table with test tubes and jars. They invite me to choose between the symbolic dose (3 drops) or the dose similar to their usual Valtran intake (11 drops). My curiosity being greater than my fear, I choose the 11-drop dose. At first, I feel nothing. I am even impatient. After about ten minutes, a slight warmth invades my body, surrounding me like a kind of invisible blanket that protects and soothes me.
In this act of renunciation and mourning for their treatment, the artist wanted to share their experience of this drug with us, one that they have been using for over a decade. Drawing on my sensation of an invisible blanket, I see a parallel connection with the illuminated black and white image on the wall, which depicts the artist wearing a shimmering survival blanket. As though dressed in a garment of light, Lomami seems to be reaching or observing another space-time, gazing upwards through her sunglasses. We too are elsewhere. The three hours seem shorter. We chat, snack, scribble on the papers at our disposal. Depending on our individual needs, some of us take a nap, while others continue chatting. We rest, wake up, and talk about things again. These unique moments remind me of wonderful discussions with friends when everything was quiet at night. This performance reconnects me to those precious times. The Valtran only lasted 3 hours, but the effect of this performance lasted into the following days. After this suspended time, I decided to prolong this feeling of mental calm and take a moment to disconnect from the frantic pace of our daily lives, from the sense of urgency and the need for limitless productivity.
With this experimental and politically-charged work, Lomami creates a temporal breach that allows us to see the extent of the impact of a cynical system that favors profits over lives. aksanti 33 (part 2)
is a reminder that rest and well-being should be a right rather than a privilege. It is also an invitation to focus on the importance of sharing and connecting as a means to counter the ill effects of capitalist systems. The creation of an archive of these three days will help spread these reflections and messages to a wider audience; this will be something to watch for.
1. Valtran is an oral solution, taken in drops. It is composed of a weak synthetic opioid (tilidine) and an anti-opioid (naloxone). Artist's confirmation e-mail, March 01, 2023.
About the writer
Cécilia Bracmort is a French/Canadian artist and curator with Caribbean origins (Martinique and Guadeloupe) living in Montreal. Her artistic and curatorial practice focuses on the notions of identity – individual or collective -, memory, history in order to discover other viewpoints and obtain new readings of these notions and of the current world. In her art or in her projects, she favours the mixing of genres, transdisciplinarity and experimentation.
Holder of a master’s degree in cultural mediation and communication at Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy of art at Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and a B.A. in Fine Arts at Bishop’s University, she has participated in numerous projects in visual arts milieu in Paris and Montreal.
About the Artist
Po B. K. Lomami (Pauline Batamu Kasiwa Lomami) is an indisciplinary and interventionist artist. They are Congodescendant (DRC) from Belgium currently based in Tiohtià:ke-Mooniyang-Montreal, Canada. Lomami cultivates intrusion, interference, and introspection as strategies for the reclamation of space-time, and as a response to emergencies. Exploring super-performance and failure, their practice revolves around the displacement of work, the becoming- of their subjectivity, and the design of possible collective futures with crip, queer and Afrofeminist perspectives. Their interventions persistently question individuals, institutions, and themselves through affection, force, the absurd, and the quotidian. Lomami holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Engineering from the University of Namur, Belgium (2011,2014), and a Graduate Diploma in Communication Studies from Concordia University (2022) where they are an MFA candidate in Studio Arts – Intermedia. Their work has been presented in Belgium, Sweden, New York and Canada and their texts have been featured in French, Quebec, and Pan-African books and journals.
