Nora Mandray on Lagos’ inherent fluidity

Nora Mandray, image courtesy the artist

For all of Nora Mandray’s fluid friends, we sat down to interview the talented storyteller towards the end of her 3-month residency with us (and the Goethe Institut) to hear what she had to say about her time here. From diving near shipwrecks to encounters with Yoruba diviners in Osogbo, her stories highlight the spectacular, banal and beautiful ways we all connect to each other.

Still from WATA, a 360 degree VR camera-produced short film. Courtesy the artist.

Tushar: Do you have fans in Lagos, Nora?

Nora: I’m not sure, I think you can only tell that kind of thing after the fact. I need to receive fan mail to be sure ~ tangible traces.

Tushar: Your work seems like its a process of uncovering these tangible traces.

Nora: Exactly! My work is basically creating content and telling stories via documentary work. It’s a lot of observing sometimes and on some level, I wanted to be more involved in the stories I was telling. This was kind of my plan with the residency in Lagos.

Still from Murderabilia.

Tushar: Tell me about that plan- your plan for Lagos.

Nora: Well, I started off thinking I wanted to make a remake of an old Nollywood horror film - Evil Encounters using AI. But then when I came to Lagos, I thought it didn’t make sense to do this anymore. The plan was water. Finding Mami Wata. I wanted to work collaboratively and actually meet creatives. That’s how the Fluid Lagos Collective was born. We put out an open call for creators who would be interested in making a film on water and that was our starting point.

The Fluid Lagos collective workshop flyer.

Tushar: Funny, that’s actually my style. I love squashing things together. Sometimes I don’t think I curate. Rather, I prefer grouping things together and then seeing what magic can be made. The Fluid Lagos collective feels curated this way - a ragtag bunch people who just bring their energies together. This style is impractical but the results are woah!!

Nora: Not at all. I lived at Ajasa- your space. And it seems super practical! I think you’re more practical than you imagine. As a collective, all of our brainstorming sessions were there and that’s where the group really came together.

Tushar: It’s an energetic space!

Nora: Lights on, lights off, lights on. ;) That’s what Fluid Lagos is to me really. Sometimes you just don’t know what to expect.

Tushar: Thanks for being a trooper throughout it all!

Nora: laughter

Tushar: No, I’m serious. You’re embedded in Lagos now, you have the full experience and that really begins from the space.

Nora: It’s been very serendipitous. I was so luck to arrive to Ajasa during the Lagos Biennial. I was looking for anyone who had a camera and I met Laboomz at Sowing Watermelon Seeds. Anthony, Morola, a lot of the others brought their own vibe. I met Justin Chima through Mathilde, who I was introduced via Léa Bigot who was a previous resident at 30 Ajasa Street.

Tushar: Fluidity in all its essence. So what is hydro-feminism then?

Nora: About becoming a body of water yourself. Low and high tides. It’s anti-capitalistic, but also being powerful. Being an ecosystem and if you respect it, it provides. You can look at it from a spiritual perspecitve.

Tushar: So it’s a material lens to look at the world?

Nora: Yes. We’re 80% water. Everything is water and connecting to it.

Tushar: I’m real interested in the legacy of this project. I’m super impressed that you managed to come here, live here, embody yourself here.

Nora: I’m kinda gritty like that. My diet was mostly tuna salad! I think I became fluid like a tuna!

Tushar: hehehehe. Would you have any advice for artists like yourself who are coming here? What’s the fluid lagos mentality? A three point system.

Nora: Lagos has really allowed me to practice hydro-feminism because this city is so intense. I’ve never loved and hated a place so much!

Nora: I saw the sunrise at Tarkwa Bay. I wanted to film as the sun was rising and there was already life at 5am when I came out to take water. There was a group of 6-7 people coming from the sea- they were pulling a shipwreck.

That’s something else I wanted to tell you about my diving here. All these divers are literally cutting off metal from shipwrecks- harvesting iron. It’s crazy even underwater people are hustling. Even underwater, and they just had a breathing tube that’s it and we were around them in full scuba gear. The risk level is crazy to survive.

Tushar: Maximum city. No guts, no glory. That whole cowrie to money thing. Value has just changed. Now we’re talking about influence, the more people see you the more money you get. And it’s like the real capital is around labour, being doing the work and doing a good job, rather than this fake life and puff pieces. Times are changing. From cowries we’ve moved to money. It’s nice that the collective film brings it back.

Nora: I tried to make the film non-hierarchical. Each person did what they could. The particular day the 3rd chapter- Justin in that scene on the balacony. We started 6am crack of dawn. Ofcourse everyone was late - fluid lagos. What is time? Then all of a sudden we saw this huge black fire raging- 4 buildings that were caught on fire because of a generator. That whole street is completely burnt down. As filmmakers, this was perfect.

Tushar: I thought this was AI.

Nora: It’s part of the film. It made the intensity of the dance. But that was Lagos producing itself.

Tushar: I call it Lagos Assemblage. The city will always somehow be producing with you.

Nora: And oh my god, the sounds. I was collecting the sounds for the sound design. At the same time it’s strangely soothing, this continious chaos of sounds, car honks.

Tushar: The closeness forces you to fluidify. I think that’s the lesson.

Nora: Don’t have expectations. That’s the lesson.