There was certainly no more fitting location than the ship-like Keizersgrachtkerk in Amsterdam to host South African poet Julia-Beth Harris’s recent performance, Where the Clouds Gather. Evoking both the stormy Cape — where the clouds indeed always gather — and the seventeenth-century arrival of European men with guns, Harris dressed in their likeness. Lace inner sleeves of a uniform cupped her hands, while mineworkers’ gumboots anchored her feet. In doing so, she connected local visitors to the city’s Spirit Festival with the spirits — sometimes demons — of colonising seafarers and the early inhabitants of Harris’s native Cape Town.
Starting with the questions ‘what is your name’ and ‘why are you killing us’, asked in Afrikaans, English and IsiXhosa, Harris articulated the shock with which South Africans, centuries ago, witnessed the arrival of people bearing ‘glass and iron and wonders of technology’, the despair at the ruin that followed them, and their demise, becoming wind, part of storms and clouds, in ‘water frothy with unrest’. Yet she also mimics the spirit of the coloniser, whose fear of the ocean, the storms and the ‘other’ compelled him to conclude that ‘domination is a must’.
Finally, describing the conquered spirits of the ancestors as “drops in an ocean, pulling lives long dead,” and suggesting that a “surname” (her own?) will “have to remember the lost dimensions of reality,” she narrated how, “in the friction,” they found “new places to belong,” eventually “landing in dry places as rain” and, centuries later, descending back on Amsterdam as migrants, such as herself: “I am their rebirth.”
The performance concluded with a long letter addressed to ‘Dear Amsterdam,’ unfurled across the stage, with Harris kneeling before it, reclaiming Amsterdam as a meeting place for all spirits: “land that was shaped to protect that which wants to be free.”
Spirit festival
The Amsterdam Spirit Festival, now in its second year since launching in 2024, builds on the values of mercy, heroism, and determination, as represented in the Coat of Arms of Amsterdam, to reinforce the “true spirit of our city.” According to the Manifest on its website, this spirit “stands for equal rights and freedom of love for every person of every religion, culture, nationality, or background.” The festival seeks to celebrate mercy, described as “opening our doors to those who need it most and reaching out to those furthest from us”; heroism, as “the courage to embrace the unknown”; and determination, as “choosing a path of compassion, empathy, and vulnerability.” The festival featured numerous gatherings and performances in houses of worship, from churches to mosques and synagogues, during the last days of November and was, the organisers write, intended to “inspire calm, connection, and wonder” in a time when “prejudice and polarisation” engulf us in “pessimism.”
Read more about Julia-Beth Harris, this performance and her work in general on her website.
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