Dennis Buckland

that which the wind intends

A series of video essays exploring events from the filmmaker’s childhood on a holiday farm in the Bokkeveld mountains in South Africa- a place which, for many, is ahistorical. The investigation is informed by fragments history from a different landscape, |xam-ka !au, which is brought to life by an archive of stories told by |xam people who were living there in the 1860’s.

“ 'How to belong in this place that is so full of contradictions’ is the quest that brought Dennis Buckland back to the farm Riversong in the Bokkeveld, South Africa, where he grew up, and to |xam-ka !au, the land where the |xam San people lived, to create a new body of work consisting of a series of videos titled that which the wind intends. Through performative actions in the landscape, interviews with people that work and live there and sharing fragments of (his)stories of the |xam people, Buckland connects past, present, and future, creating echoes between events across different times and places. As the camera actively moves through the beautiful landscapes, the reflective voiceover reveals layers of the violent colonial past and its impact on the present, like strata in the rocks and sediment of the mountains and ‘koppies’ captured. History repeats itself. The violence that the |xam suffered at the hands of the Dutch and British colonizers echoes in the abuse of power and precarious lives of the Noorman family. Much remains unresolved, as past and present injustices and inequalities that the videos bring to the surface to digest, are hard to grasp, hard to put into words and hard to change. In fact they remain indigestible. Yet, Buckland’s body of work does offer a glimmer of hope, as the videos also create echoes of resistance and compassion. Moral actions, even when few and far between, and shared values also repeat themselves, and may inspire present and future generations. “

Text by Judith Westerveld.

2023