Camille Turner, Awakening, 2019. 3-channel video installation. filmed and edited by Esery Mondésir and composed by Ravi Naimpally. 

Awakening, a film by Camille Turner presents a conversation that takes place in the future on a spaceship. Two Afronauts (African space travellersI)encounter Gloria Smith, a Black woman from present day Canada who is an activist on a mission to travel back in time to stop the transatlantic trade in African people. Upon her arrival on the spaceship Gloria ruptures its security and bypasses the rules that govern space-time. She is on a mission to ask the Afronauts aboard the ship for help in carrying out her plans but she arrives barely conscious and unable to speak due to exhaustion from her time travelling. The two Afronauts telepathically understand what she is up to and are aware that she is their ancestor. They contemplate the stakes and implications of her mission and argue about whether or not to help her. Since the past is tethered to the present and future, if her mission is successful millions of their ancestors would be saved from the upheaval and violence of enslavement, but on the other hand, the present world which is underwritten by the transatlantic enslavement of Africans, including their own lives, would cease to exist.

Awakening was commissioned and presented by the Art Gallery of Alberta. It was curated by Jessie R. Short for part of Nests for the End of the World in Edmonton, 2020; and screened during Nuit Blanche in Toronto, 2020 and at the Textile Museum’s 2021 Wellbeing, Health and Healing series curated by Syrus Marcus-Ware and Jenna Reid. It was most recently presented by Dunlop Art Gallery in 2022. 

Ex: Jen Katshunga

Why: Emilie Jabouin

Ex (Voiceover): Chrystelle Maechler

Why (Voiceover): Danyelle Boily

Makeup: Kristen Gallacher

Animation: Daniel Bladini

Cinematographer and Video Editor: Esery Mondesir

Composer and Sound Engineer: Ravi Naimpally

Script Consultation: Winston James, Esery Mondesir, and Nadine Valcin