UNDA TULA TA ? (WHERE IS TULA?)
Inscribing History and storytelling are actually not that far apart and the lines do tend to get blurred many times. As the carriers of oral history whispered down the generations and embedded within diverse philosophies, contemporary history is more influenced by collective memory (and amnesia) than we would admit. Can we really tell memory and history apart. This is a question that recurs in this story. It is a story that speaks of the memory of slavery and repression and the accompanying pain and humiliation continuos to scar subsequent generations. These memories are not easy to erase, as they are deeply embedded to the process of identity formation of the coming generations

This is a short story about a journey of self discovery into another part of the world. Like this one here to Brisbane that was my first journey to Curacao. And unlike Columbus I needed a visa to get in. Curacao is a small island in the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean. This is where the Curocao blue in cocktails that everyone likes so much. The journey was long with lot of time spent at the airport transit lounge. I feared that my senses would be dulled and end up reacting reflexively, which is the condition of lot of art being produced by foreign artists on distant shores. This some curator has termed the art being produced at various residences on a regular basis as nothing but the angst of the airport lounge. Finally the port arrives and I step out into warmth of the curacao night . It is an out and out tourist destination, maybe a little less than its more famous neighbour Aruba. Below the surface of this happy go lucky façade hides a more sinister history.

MEMORY AND HISTORY
Oral history is the product of the collective memory. It sites itself on the palimpsest borders of these two territories that of personal memories and the public history. Who maps these territories, who defines these discourses at the core of the struggle for an identity. Curacao is sleeping. The struggle of Tula the slave leader remains beneath the surface pulsating like a volcano on the brink of exploding. The denial of history, the marginalisation and appropriation of narratives have always created vacuums that if unaddressed, lead to upheavals. My work is not just an intervention, but is an act of transgression. As Bataille on transgression says:

"A feeling of danger - yet not so pressing as to preclude any delay - places us before a nauseating void. A void in the face of which our being is plenum, threatened with losing its plenitude, both desiring and fearing to lose it. As if the consciousness of plenitude demanded the state of plenitude demanded a state of uncertainty, of suspension" (George Bataille,Transgression, The Phaedra Complex, p101)

This was what was happening in Curacao. With a majority of population of descending from then black slaves the ruling class was still those emerging from a few dutuch families that not only controlled the economic power but also the political power and one of the minister was the owner of the main newspaper.

Curacao was sleeping.

The name of the workshop was”WATAMULA”. What is Watamula? Watamula in the language of the Curacao means the volcanic geysers that exist on the island. Their subterranean eruption found a resonance in the artists conception of personal humiliation, anger and the repression of their ancestors in slavery that existed like a festering wound below the surface of the skin that seems to have healed but has never healed. Like the volcanic geysers of Watamula they needed to be excavated so that they can heal.

Curacao as a Dutch colony was thew biggest slave market between the Americas and Africa. In fact it was the biggest slave market of that region. Yet when the slaves got emancipated in 1863 the evacuating Dutch colonists erased all documentation of slavery. Of the few documentation that survived was the detailed description of the execution of the slave leaders of the biggest slave uprising of October 1795

The workshop centred around the museum called the Landhuis Knip. Landhuis Knip, once a plantation home, was the site of a major slave revolt in 1795. The signal for the rebellion came from plantation Kenepa (Knip), situated in Bandabou, the property of Shon Caspar Lodewijk van Uytrecht He was also the biggest slave owner of the region. Tula, the leader of the rebellion, belonged to this plantation.

Together with Bastiaan Carpata and others, Tula prepared the decisive strategy for a battle that lasted almost two months. Among them was also Louis Mercier a Frenchman who was one of the many French idealists who after the French revolution set off to the colonised world thinking that the idea of liberty equality and fraternity also the was the right of all and not a privileged few

The battle of Knip. in which the most oppressed and humiliated group of people, the slaves, had decided to unite and fight for freedom. They were conscious of the disgust the government showed towards blacks and the slave population and they were aware of the punishment they would receive if their battle were to fail. But they were absolutely convinced that their cause was just. Was it not true that white people fought each other over the right of ownership of this island - and were not free black men and mulattos among them?

The slaves could not leave written accounts of what happened between mid-august and the beginning of October of 1795. What exists in the archives are the reports and court decisions recorded by the dominant white administrators of the time.

Towards the more recent times the government of Curacao had declared all the slave owners house as museums of the culture. So Landhuis Knip became a museum. But the biggest question that begs to be asked what constitutes a museum? Is the museum a mere collection of fragmented de- contextualised objects or should it reflect the aspirations of the people. Was the museum a tomb of an ossified history or did it reflect a living culture.

Landhuis Knip was not a museum. It did not reflect history or the memory of the people on the contrary it was the symbol of everything that was wrong in the process of absense of history the repression of memory

The preservation of Landhuis Knip in the face of denial of the history of the majority of the population is an act of betrayal. It is the void that faces the plenum of the island. Landhuis Knip to me is not a testimony to the flowering of history but a monument to tragedy across generation. It is the unmarked grave of unrequited aspirations and untold stories. The mapping of its architecture is the structure of the denial that can be heard as the winds that moan through its shutters.

Landhuis faced me as a void awaiting the exploration of the extreme and the hazardous. I faced the house as a slave waiting to be freed, bound by the absence of any narrative. So my act on it would be that act of transgression which in its desire would open old wounds only in order to heal them.

Who was Tula?

TULA: Tula has no face. He is like the wind that blows in the valley. There are only whispered stories and songs. He has no family on the island. Like me he was an outsider. He is only a presence. So I cast his black shadow on the Landhuis. His only knowledge is that of how he was captured by his own, tortured and beheaded. The colonisers thought that the dismemberment of his body world remove him from the annals of history - on the contrary he has spread into the collective memory of the people. The face of Tula split into two straddles the entrance of the Landhuis. As you enter you enter through him and he enters your subconscious as his narrative merges with his. Age old voodoo songs still sing of Tula the brave . They have become the true carriers of history.

THE COLOUR BLACK: Black is just not the colour of the skin. It is the colour of the hidden history. It can absorb light; it is the colour of the shadow.. Conceptualised only in black the images in their blackness invade the surface of the building, creeping up to the edge of the roof where it meets the freedom of the sky. The yellow of the walls of the landhuis was supposed to be a representation of the golden colour of the dutch royalty.

Black is not the absence It is to fill the void.

The work was like an explosion across the city but had different effect on different people. While there was lot of consternation among the ruling class there was a celebration among the common people. They started gravitating towards the spot. It became a spontaneous festive congregation opf the black culture. Torches were lit up around the house. There was a festival of voodoo songs . It seemed that the voodoo songs were the only record of the original culture of the black population. When the people were snatched for slvery they belonged to different tribes and different languages and were throen together on the slave ship where they were put into small rectangle boxes. And there they remained for the rest of the journey. Eating and excreting in the same place. If they died they were taken out and thrown into the ocean. That’s how they travelled. The voodoo song sings of these journeys those dark days and the pain. They speak of the brave tula and his fight for justice.

The official reaction was hard and furious and the local main newspaper had a headline emblazoned that asked a big question. What was the limit of Art?

What was the role of Art? Whether an outsider had the right to comment on somebody else’s problem? There is never a single answer to any mof these questions and one can only approximate an answer Well probably the limit was only upto the point it transgresses to and not lose its humanity. Whether there is such a thing as an internal conflict when a nation is being torn apart.

About the Site
The Watamula International Artists' Workshop took place at Landhuis Knip in Curaçao between September 21 and October 12, 2000. Landhuis Knip, once a plantation home, was the site of a major slave revolt in 1795. The signal for the rebellion came from plantation Kenepa (Knip), situated in Bandabou, the property of Shon Caspar Lodewijk van Uytrecht. Tula, the leader of the rebellion, belonged to this plantation. Together with Bastiaan Carpata and others, Tula prepared the decisive strategy for a battle that lasted almost two months. A battle in which the most oppressed and humiliated group of people, the slaves, had decided to unite and fight for freedom. They were conscious of the disgust the government showed towards blacks and the slave population and they were aware of the punishment they would receive if their battle were to fail. But they were absolutely convinced that their cause was just. Was it not true that white people fought each other over the right of ownership of this island - and were not free black men and mulattos among them?

The slaves could not leave written accounts of what happened between mid-august and the beginning of October of 1795. What exists in the archives are the reports and court decisions recorded by the dominant white administrators of the time.

August 17, 1795
Early in the morning, after the bell had sounded to announce the beginning of the working day, 40 to 50 slaves of the plantation on Kenepa got together on the square in front of the plantation house and told their owner, van Uytrecht, that they were not willing to work for him anymore. He told them to deposit their complaints with the Lieutenant Governor at Fort Amsterdam.

At that point, the rebellious slaves freed those who had been punished and locked up in a cage on the plantation. Afterwards they marched towards plantation Sta. Cruz where they joined forces with slaves coming from other plantations.

In the mean time, van Uytrecht had sent his son on horseback to Governor de Veer in town with a handwritten note. At seven o'clock that night the colonial council held an urgent meeting and decided to:
1. Call upon all free black and mulatto captains to patrol all night and report immediately how many men were ready to leave for Bandabou, if that should be necessary.
2. Alert Commander Wierts of the navy ship Medea, moored at the harbour, to defend Fort Amsterdam.

August 18, 1795
The slaves started marching in the direction of Porto Mari - on their way they crossed the plantations San Nicholas, Santa Martha and San Juan. Their strategy was to advance towards town but also keeping an eye open for hiding places and block advances of reinforcements arriving from town. The plantation owners had left their houses and fled towards town, leaving the food and water supplies in the hands of the slaves. Around that time, Louis Mercier, one of the leaders, went back to plantation Kenepa to motivate those who stayed behind, and to get weapons and powder at the fortifications. At Fontein, Perdro Wacaww captured and killed the Dutch owner Sabel, who was the first white victim of the rebels.

Mercier got weapons and a canon from plantation Fontein and made preparations to occupy the hill close to the country house from which they could also control the movements to and from Bandabou. From this moment on, Tula and his comrades could count on the help of the majority of the slaves and free blacks of Bandabou.

According to statistics, Bandabou had between 4 and 5000 inhabitants in 1795 - the majority were slaves. Even though the grounds were called plantations, they did not grow staples such as sugar or tobacco, which were common on the other Caribbean islands. Lacking rain, only essentials to feed the population such as corn, yams or fruit trees could be grown here. The highest amount of slaves owned by one master was 400. These bigger slave populations were needed to harvest salt from the salt pans.

In town meanwhile,the colonial council had decided to guard Rodeweg with a group of 80 free blacks and 8 white marines, in order to defend the city against any attack of the rebels. Furthermore, they decided to send an army of 60 black and white soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Pleeger de Bandabou.

They underestimated the offensive power of the rebels, but were also cautious to leave town with sufficient military defence. In those turbulent days, many enemy ships were cruising the Caribbean Sea, and pirates were also active.

August 19, 7995
Lieutenant Pleeger suffered a defeat at the plantation of Old St. Marie. Plantation owners had formed an army of volunteers on horseback. The rebel slaves were now considered a threat to the dominant white society.

The colonial council sent a bigger army under the command of Captain van Westerholt to Bandabou. Van Westerhold had orders to offer clemency to the rebels in order to save lives.

Father Schinck, a priest of the Fransiscan order, had tried to convince the rebels to give up the battle. Tula told him: "they have treated us very badly. We don't want to harm anybody but we want freedom. Is not everyone on earth descendant of Adam and Eve. did I do wrong to free 22 brothers from prison where they were unjustly put? Ai, father, even an animal gets better treatment."

One has to know, as background information, that the protestant Dutch considered their religion to be exclusively for white people. They never baptised slaves, contrary to the catholic church.

Tula demanded freedom like his brothers in Haiti, even after van Westerholt had offered a pardon. A decisive battle took place at Ser'i Fontein (a small hill) and was lost by the rebels who had to mourn many deaths. Finally they lost the battle and the leaders were captured and "brought to justice".

Louis Mercier was caught in the vicinity of Landhuis Kenepa. Tula was captured on September 18th by a slave of the same plantation. Carpata and Pedro Wacaaw fell into a trap set-up by slaves on plantation San Juan, one day later. Those slaves stayed loyal to their white owners, not knowing that it would take until 1863 to gain freedom.

Tula's body was cut open, his face burned. Finally he was beheaded. Carpata had to watch first and then received the same punishment. The hands of Pedro Wacaaw were cut off, he was dragged by a horse and his head was smashed with a big hammer. The executions took place on October 3rd, 1795. Louis Mercier and others were hanged. In all, 26 rebels received the death penalty. Free blacks who had helped the rebellious slaves were banned from the island.

In memory of Tula and his comrades, a statue has been erected on Rif, the very spot where their heads were put on stakes as a warning to the whole population.

Extracted from text by Tony Monsanto

Subba Ghosh