One month aboard a cargo ship with the goal of performing a version of myself, meaning a woman wandering, a woman not sure, a woman as just a woman on a boat, not a woman-on-a-boat-with-a-purpose-other-than-being-on-a-boat, but, that: a woman on a boat with the sole purpose of being on the boat to get to the other side. The performance was to be this state of being, this state of perhaps becoming, this state.

Yet, things didn’t work out as planned and the woman who was to perform a woman without a plan (me) actualized the woman who no longer had a plan. No longer the main character of a film, her only plan sans plan was to explore that state and to perform the stateless. Yet, as the performance became less and less documented, the image of this woman, the representation, subsided and utility became abstract.



In what position, in what state, do we have meaning? How do we position ourselves to become useful within a community, within a society, within… a machine.



Watching sailors move in and out of their assigned duties, their assigned shifts. 4am to 8am, engine room. 8:30am breakfast. 9:15 to 11:30 sleep. 12 noon lunch. 13:00 to 16:15 the bridge. 16:15 coffee. I watched, I listened, I rocked with the waves and I wondered.



To perform meaning when one no longer has utility would be to learn. Placing myself in the position of student I sought to acquire a new skill and to uplift/ glorify (??) the technique and skill of another ‘less mandatory’ position: the stewardess and her knowledge of napkin folding.



As the only women on an international shipping container boat Tamara and I developed a special kin, both taking on the part of a family figure and offering the other an opportunity to extend their position (mother-daught/ niece-aunt/granddaughter-grandmother, etc.).



Tamara had worked on cruise ships for over ? years before entering the domaine of cargo ships. While working on cruise ships she spend 6 hours per day folding decorative napkins for the dining service- 3 hours before lunch and 3 hours before dinner. She knows 40 different styles of decorative folding.



Interested in the contrast of necessity, of function, of interest and of skill (between the sailors and the stewardess), I asked Tamara to instruct her napkin folding to me before a camera.

In the video we are sitting in the captain’s dining hall of the ship, a room slightly more formal than the sailors’ dining hall, yet still very utilitarian. In the film you will encounter her instruction of styles, however, our relationship and our method of communication which speaks beyond words- due to language barriers- is very evident and tender.

TAMARA
Folding Napkins