Tell The Water What The Clay Kept Secret

Abstract

Ola Hassanain’s current project, Tell The Water What The Clay Kept Secret (2023-) is an ongoing visual research project, which explores intimate and familiar “‘sites of catastrophe”’. In this project, Hassanain turns to her grandmother’s house, located in Sudan’s Gezira Scheme, a network of irrigation canals and slopes, as a “‘site of catastrophe”’. The imperial Gezira Scheme was initiated by the British while the region was governed as part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In conversation with Co-editor Chandra Frank, Hassanain unpacks the spatial implications of catastrophe: Each iteration of the project reflects a specific cycle of catastrophe. By working with three scripts: Whispers, Watching, and Arrivals, Hassanain shares how water and clay, in the context of her grandmother’s house, manifest as cracks which tell us something about the durational and temporal implications of catastrophe. Hassanain’s work requires us to critically contemplate the connections between genocide, climates of waiting, and Black geographies.