Video - Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno
About:
Saucer_Kambao_Sambaza
Saucer/Kambao/Sambaza - Wooden plank used as an extra seat in the matatu.
Matatu - Public service vehicle (PSV) in Kenya
Seats - 14 - 18
A portrait of sambaza, an invisible object or a makershift, a name commonly used in the cities and suburbs of Kenya. A small stool or wooden plank stored in a concealed compartment inside the matatu or sometimes hidden behind the drivers’ seat when not in use, often made available when the matatu is thought to be full, creates extra space to maximize passenger capacity and probably profit. By law in Kenya the seat is illegal, the tout would install it in the aisle walkway between the assigned seats generally turning a 14-seater psv into 19 or 20 seater thus obstructing access to the door and creating hazards in the event of emergency. For this 6-8 by 12-14 inches seat also known as sambaza or ndege ya chini low-flying aircraft in swahili word, it implies to spread or distribute, it plays a huge role in maximizing profit often by squeezing more passengers at rush hours who are desperate, these commuters are left with little choice but to use this option by being plugged into sambaza.
Concept:
Through the dancer's body the work explores the essence of Kenya's matatu industry. For economic reasons or by design the system becomes a system that operates as a system within a system, complex and informal. The network is structured, a loop of navigation, mitigation, and maneuvering, that embodies bribing as one element for survival and sustainability, its complexity is diffused through to formal state regulators and normalized thus coursing absorption of institution’s mandate.
What's the role of commuters and system operators from an economical lens? What's the role of the physical matatu? Does it mean that it has lost its original objective? Has there been transformation from a place of sociability and mobility performance, to a space where social relation of the crowd is managed by the crew, leveraging language to charm passengers, pressure them to pay, and manage confrontations. Or has it become a place of protest and permanent consumption? Do commuters lose their rights when they don’t understand the system? Or only when they opt for cheap chaotic transits and further accepting the use of saucer and exploitation of the very system that needs to serve them?
Could it be that power dynamics and regulatory loops within these corridors have lost its essence? whereby laws are created, matatus defy them, transgression is present, law enforcers extort bribes, and conditions remain, allowing for a form of occupied legal space, where informal power outweighs formal law?
The paradox is embedded in the freedom, freedom in placement of the seat where facing either direction does not matter thus its execution acts as an dehumanization, the body is treated as a commodity for profit, and there is freedom in the occupation of the occupied space which reflects the overcrowding and squeezing into tiny spaces, can it be that this freedom or altered placement symbolises the informal, adaptable nature of the matatus to maximize on profit and how to maneuver the system?
work in progress......
Image - Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno