Douen Islands: In Forest & Wild Skies

Saturday 12 April, 2014, 8 pm, at Alice Yard

Douen Islands is an ongoing, open collaborative project — featuring writers, poets, musicians, artists, photographers, and others — first launched on All Hallow’s Eve, 2013, by poet Andre Bagoo and designer Kriston Chen.

On Saturday 12 April, Alice Yard will host an event by the Douen Islands collaborators, as part of the 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest pre-festival programme. Douen Islands: In Forest & Wild Skies will be a reading of poetry and prose produced as part of an ongoing collaboration around the Trinidad and Tobago folklore character of the douen, a haunted child spirit.

The event will feature poetry from Andre Bagoo and Shivanee Ramlochan and prose from Sharon Millar. This will involve moving images by Kriston Chen and sitar recordings from Sharda Patasar.

The collaborators state: “Douen Islands is a journey, unearthing what is lost — the furtive child foraging through darkened forest; tricked by moonlight into a vacant past; vanishing, like love and blood, into wild skies. A slippery stream flowing out of this post-Independence country, trek into heat, memory, nightmare, dream. Take back the steps we never took. Seek to find.”

All are invited.

Read an interview with Bagoo and Chen about the Douen Islands project at Antilles, the Caribbean Review of Books blog.

Five by Night: new fiction from T&T, presented by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest

Tuesday 25 March, 2014, 8 pm, at Alice Yard

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest presents an evening of new and recent fiction from five Trinidadian writers, as part of the programme for the Diasporic Literary Archives workshop in Port of Spain. 2013 OCM Bocas Prizewinner Monique Roffey will join 2013 Hollick Arvon Prizewinner Barbara Jenkins and writers Vashti Bowlah, Sharon Millar, and Alake Pilgrim, all past Bocas authors, at an informal reading session at Alice Yard. This event is part of the pre-festival programme for the 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

All are invited.

Christopher Cozier: One Night Collaborations, version 2

Tuesday 18 March, 2014, 8 pm, at Alice Yard

Christopher Cozier is a Trinidadian artist and writer, and a co-director of Alice Yard. On the night of Tuesday 18 March, to accompany the award ceremony for his 2013 Prince Claus Award, he will stage three experimental and interactive projects at Alice Yard, involving a range of collaborators. The event is open to the public from 8 pm, and audience members are invited to record the proceedings with their cameras and phones, and post the documentation online.

The evening will include:

• The latest version of Sound System, a project which began in 2001 and has thirteen years of accumulated audio contributions, with mixes by Robin Foster, Martin Raymond, Daniel Haun, and Kevon Walker, and sound elements by Sheldon Holder, Christian Campbell, Chantal Esdelle, Sheena Rose, Ebony G. Patterson, Yvette Grey, Jomo Slusher, and Cozier himself. This is the first time the work will be presented in Trinidad. The street installation is presented with the support of Suspex Auto Club.

• A series of animated projected sequences by Nadia Huggins, Rodell Warner, and North Eleven, interpretations of Cozier’s recent project The Arrest: Hands Up, Hand Out.

• Made in China, a live action in collaboration with Sean Rambarran.

All are invited.