[Vwoolf] Kabe Wilson interview

[Susan Friedman]

Hi All, If Woolfians don't yet know about Kabe Wilson's project, I would
urge you to find out. Google Kabe Wilson, or get his dazzling interview on
YouTube. He is a multi-media artist living in Cambridge, UK. In 2014, he
performed "The Dreadlock Hoax" in a Bloomsbury drawing room where Woolf
apparently lived briefly. Dressed up as Woolf and in his natural
dreadlocks, he was shadowing The Dreadnaught Hoax of 1909 when Woolf joined
her brother and others dressed up in blackface as Abyssian royals and
fooled the British Navy. In the performance he described his 5-year project
of remixing, recysling every word of A Room of One's Own--and only those
words the same number of times Woolf used them--into a novella about a
mixed race scholarship queer student at Cambridge who experiences terrible
racism, finds Black Power books from the 1960s US civil rights movements
(Carmichael and Brown) and determines to burn down university libraries,
including the MSS of A Room on display. However, the MSS doesn't burn, and
Olivia decides she can re-order, refresh, re-mix Woolf's words to make them
deal with race, class, and gender issues of the 21st century. It's called *Of
One Woman or So, *by Olivia N'Gowfri (an anagram of Woolf's name and
title). It's utterly fascinating! Kabe Wilson is unwilling at this point to
publish the novella, although he has been very generous in sharing the PDF,
which has allowed a number of people to teach it in their Woolf classes.
He conceives of the project as an art installation, and the re-ordered
words cut and glued to a large scroll have been exhibited a number of times
in the UK. He was the keynote speaker at the conference Recycling Woolf in
Nancy, France June 2019--a volume based on the conference is in process,
and in it Kabe Wilson and I have a lengthy "conversation" about his work,
especially carrying its implications into current issues of race and of
environmental crisis.
     I was inspired by discovering his work to edit a book, *Contemporary
Revolutions: Turning Back to the Future in 21st-Century Literature and
Art *(Bloomsbury,
2019), now in paperback--a very transnational discussion of various forms
of recycling the past for the future, covering Syria, Egypt, Pacific
Islands, South Africa, Netherlands, UK, etc. The introduction and my essay
in the book center on Kabe Wilson. I would be happy to send anyone a PDF of
my essay upon request. Wonderful essays in the volume focused on Woolf
include Margaret Homans on *Orlando* and trans issues; and Elizabeth Abel
on Woolf and Sebald.
    As Woolfians well know, there are endless ways to teach Woolf in
conjunction with the present and the future--paired especially with works
taking up issues of huge contemporary concern, like race, neocolonialism,
feminism, sexuality, trans issues, environmental crisis, economic crisis,
social in/justice and on and on. Living through the pandemic, I wonder what
her experience was in 1918-1920. Living through the massive demonstrations
for fundamental change on institutionalized racism in the US and around the
world, I go back again and again to *Three Guineas* and to Woolf's
willingness, in spite of her own limitations, to ask fundamental questions
about interlocking oppressions.
Greetings to all, Susan


On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dr T Tate via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Elizabeth,
>
> Re. Kabe Wilson's work on Woolf.
>
> Kabe Wilson has spoken several times on our Woolf summer courses, and
> brought along his remarkable rewriting of A Room of One's Own, which is
> an interesting artefact in itself, all on one huge sheet of paper.
>
> There are a couple of links here which might be useful for your class:
> https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk/news/kabe-2019
>
> Best wishes,
> Trudi
> ---
> Dr Trudi Tate
> Literature Cambridge
> www.literaturecambridge.co.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Vwoolf mailing list
> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
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>


-- 
Susan Stanford Friedman
Hilldale Professor Emerita in the Humanities
Virginia Woolf Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies
7103 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park St.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608-258-8080
Fax: 608-263-3709
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