Binelde Hyrcan at GFZK, Leipzig
In Binelde Hyrcan’s 2011 video “Cambeck” at the GFZK (Gallery for Contemporary Art) in Leipzig, the first scene opens with a shot of four kids at play. Each of them is sitting in a dug-out hole by the beach facing the open water. Right before this opening scene, we hear their conversation. It evokes the image of an open top limousine on a slow ride with its guests in the backseat asking their driver to go faster.
Shot in Hyrcan’s home country Angola, which experienced 26 years of civil war from 1975 until 2002, the four kids in the video take on adult personas that express their hopes and fears while simultaneously revealing their parents generation’s unfulfilled ambitions. At one point in the two-and-a-half minute video, one of the backseat protagonists breaks with his role and refers to his father who lives in the US and who will soon welcome his son to join him in a better life. The boy then addresses their “driver”, telling him how he will never be able to leave behind his current situation and that he will eventually end up “in a house made of cans.”
Hyrcan’s video depicts how poverty in a country ravished by colonialism and later by war is re-imagined and acted out by its youngest citizens (It is also worth noting how the boys are testing out adopted norms of masculinity as evident in the hierarchical relationship between the “driver” and his “patrons”.). On the one hand, their imaginary limousine is a familiar trope of children’s play: a device or vehicle that stands for increased mobility, freedom and ultimately agency (like a plane, train, ship, etc.) - all of which remain unattainable. On the other hand, the video’s imaginary car points to a particularly resourceful type of play: with exception of one flip-flop that serves as steering wheel there are no additional material resources (like wood, metal, plastic) that imitate the shape, look or function of a car. The car is not even made from sand; the car is part of the beach and barely distinguishable from it. In this case, the absence of the car is supplemented by these children’s imagination. But the car in absentia also points to a life stripped of resources. This opens up the children’s role play to a double meaning: their desire to imagine what is out of reach or unthinkable and their awareness to reenact the realities of their condition. Binelde Hyrcan’s “Cambeck” is a bitter-sweet testimony to the boundless territory that is children's play and the obstacles created by adults that prove inescapable - even when at play.
