A few months ago, I shared about my trip to Red Clay Studio, an art center in Tamale. I also mentioned in that post that even though I explored a lot, I still hadn't seen everything the place had to offer.
Well, on Friday, I went back there to see a little bit more of the place. Again, still couldn’t see the entire place.
This time around, there wasn’t a tour guide around for some reason, so a friend basically became the tour guide cos they’ve been here many times already.
So starting off the tour, we had these clay pots. I’m not sure exactly what they’ll be used for, or what fancy name the art they’ll be turned into will be called.
Anyways, around here, they’re used to store water. In the early 2000s, almost every house in my neighborhood had one of these pots because fridges were not really as common as they’re now. Let me tell you, these pots just don’t freeze water, but boy are they cool!
How they kept them cool was that they would place the pots inside these sacks, wet the sacs, and find a cool shaded spot in the house to place them.
Of course, if they’re in an art center, I’m sure there must be different plans for them besides use as cooling pots. According to my friend, they’re most likely going to be used to paint human heads😂. I don’t really know. I guess we’ll find out in a few months when they’re put to use. As for the boxes, I have absolutely nothing to say about them because I have no clue what they’re doing there. They look like pretty normal boxes to me.
Next, I went to take a closer look at this train. I know nothing about trains, but (again according to my friend) this is the engine or so? I don’t know for sure cos this is the closest I’d gotten to a train in my life up until this point. I could agree with my friend though, cos I’ve seen Tractor engines and they look somewhat similar to this. I also watched a video on social media last month where one guy was explaining where a certain car engine got it’s name from, and I remember the engine looked like a mini version of this right here.
As for this thing here, no one had any idea what it was. We all had a few ideas though. Me personally, I thought it was one of two things - A submarine, or some sort of a watchtower. I’m thinking these two things because of the steel stair-climb thingies inside it and the small opening at the rear end. I told my friend I’d tell them what it was in 3 days once I posted it on Hive, cos my friends on Hive know all sorts of things. So someone better get talking.😂
And finally to the mega train itself. This is a very old train. I found this symbol along the sides of the train. If you remember this picture above from my post a few months ago, I showed you guys a picture of some photos in the room full of art. One of those pictures showed people standing in front of this train.
Aside this, the train looked pretty old both on the outside and in. We weren’t allowed to go into the train, but I managed to sneak inside to get these.
At the back end, there was this small compartment that we argued over about what it could be. I’m of the personal opinion it was like a small toilet. I’m convinced I’m right because I took a look directly under that small compartment and I saw a hole, almost resembling some sort of a drainage system.
I also got these pictures of the insides of the train through the window. I think these were probably either scribbled on there from wherever the train was kept before it got here, or from passengers that boarded this train back in the day. Although, I think the latter is highly unlikely.
Looking at these window pictures later, I realized they look like paintings, because of the white window frames. Not sure if I’m the only one seeing them though.
And finally we got to the front of the train where we saw the compartment where the coal (fuel basically) was fed into. I’m not sure what it’s called.
This was basically the end of the train part of the tour. I didn’t pay much attention to the planes this time cos I saw my fair share of planes last time. I still took a few pictures though.
And the most interesting part of the tour!
The Capital Corpses
Fancy name, right? This is one of the things I love about art - the fancy names. And this fancy name tells a story.
(A small background story of why this place is called the Capital Corpses)
Ibrahim collected these rusted sewing machines and out-of-use school desks and turned into the Capital Corpses. He called it that because these artifacts were collected from Tamale, the Capital of the Northern Region. And seeing that they were rusting and out of use, they’re basically dead.
In this room, there over 100 of these rusted sewing machines on school desks. These are all wired and connected to a switch, and you can turn them on by stepping on the switch that corresponds to a certain row.
Seeing all of these turned on in harmony under complete silence is breathtaking!
But this is not even the coolest thing about the place.
When it is extremely quiet around this part of Red Clay, it is rumored that friction of the the corpses (rusted sewing machines) rusted parts moving against each other produces bird chirping sounds. I’m not sure how true this is, but I recorded the video attached so you can see and be your own judge.
I couldn’t really get as much of the history in this trip because we didn’t have a tour guide with us. I was really curious about what the black hanging cloth represents, but my bet is that it goes to add to the "corpses” in the name.
Oh yes, and there was this humongous blackboard too. Although not very visible, it still has writings of the subjects they were used to teach for the last time before they were put into this work of art.
And this brings us to the end of this month’s trip to Red Clay Studios. In my next trip there, hopefully I should cover from the Parliament of Ghosts to everything else remaining.
▶️ 3Speak