After an intense few days, especially for Esther as she had to edit the videos, the installation was ready. Last night the transmediale was officially opened, and inmediately the exhibitionspace was swarming with people. I expect the weekend, though, to be even more busy.
After two weeks we met Purdy again, the collared cow, an opportunity to download the first collar data. Although Purdy was picked for her mild character, she still needs to be caught with a rope and has to be held to the ground to undergo the procedure. Tijmen connects the USB cable to Purdy‘s collar, and sits next to her with his laptop to download the data.
Purdy tries to free herself a few times, but the herders manage to keep her down and Tijmen manages to keep the cable, laptop and his nerves under control. So we manage to finish the procedure relatively fast, and now we have thirteen days of herding and one day of migration data on our harddisk.
The distributors that we did a workshop with, including Usman whose track was on display, were a surprisingly lively bunch. It turned out they were all old university buddies. I was surprised to find graduates driving trucks, but apparently in Nigeria you can’t be too picky (or too Peaky for that matter, even the truckdrivers were happy to be associated with that brand).The robot performed admirably. By that I don’t mean that the track looks as it should, I’ve gotten used to that excitement. What I mean is that in this track the robot really was an actor on a stage because it paused for long periods of time at the places where we had resupplied the shops. This emphasised that it wasn’t just scaled down in space, but also in time. It’s not just a drawing, it’s a performance, a re-enactment. I wonder if there are other stop-n-go groups that would be interesting to watch.
A picture of Esther smiling proudly. Everytime I look at Idris’ track Ithink about how he just criss-crosses the countryside with no regard for roads, fields, and according to the local population, even crops. Hence the relatively straight line. During one of the workshops I caught some more detail about the Fulani “right to go anywhere”. They are officially only allowed to cross farmlands if they have already been harvested, otherwise the cows will eat everything.
Mr Usman Okolo distributes Peak milk to both small-small shops and decent supermarkets in the Kubwa district: one of the suburbs of Abuja. We chose to track him because his round visits a shop directly opposite the spot where Binta ended her distribution round, selling nonno that she makes from the milk mr Idris’ cows produce. Today we came back to visit the same location from the side of NomadicMILK project: tracking the Peak milk distribution. At the end of our journey the two lines now really tough each other: the Fulani Nono and Peakmilk…
