Sticks and Bones — CAMILLE TURNER

Camille Turner, STICKS AND BONES, 2023. Various materials gathered from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and single channel video installation (2:59). Filmed and edited by Cody Westman. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid for Otherworld at Art Museum.

STICKS AND BONES, 2023

STICKS AND BONES is a video performance in which Turner assembles memorials from materials that wash up on the shores of Newfoundland along with the memorials themselves as artefacts of the performance. There are 18 memorials, one to remember each of the ships constructed in Newfoundland that undertook slaving voyages and the sacred lives were carried in these vessels. (There were 19 ships but one was condemned before it left port so did not undertake a slaving voyage). These memorials are created as an act of memory and mourning that mark the perilous journeys of ships long dissolved, people kidnapped and brought to alien shores, and the molecular remains of the bodies of the 740 who died en route and were thrown into the ocean.

Written and Performed by Camille Turner

Filmed and Edited by Cody Westman
Music by Okaya

Colour Grading Paul Dunphy

Production Assistant Brian Amadi

Production Manager Roxanne Fernandes

Special thanks to Shawn Bath and Trevor Croft of Clean Harbours Initiative