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ANDREW PUTTER
Secretly I Will Love You More For most of my life, I have lived in a suburb of the city of Cape Town, South Africa, within a thirty-minute walk of where I was born. Much of the work I do as a creative person is based on exploiting the latent potential of this out-of-the-way place I call home. Before 1652—when Dutch colonists arrived at the bottom of Africa where Cape Town now stands—the area had been the ancestral home of the Cape Hottentots. Within fifty years of the Dutch arriving, the ancient culture of the Hottentots (who called themselves Khoikhoin) had been all but extinguished in their encounter with the Europeans. Over the centuries, the pre-colonial life of the Cape Khoikhoin has been erased from popular memory. They have been forgotten. My artwork at the Venice Biennale draws on the secret utopian potential of the historical encounter between the Hottentots and the Dutch at the Cape in the 1600s. Shortly after her arrival in 1652, Maria de la Quellerie—wife of the first Dutch commander at the Cape—took Krotoa, a Khoikhoin girl-child, into her home to live with her family. Krotoa had learnt to speak Dutch by talking with sailors who had come past the Cape on their way to the East. Even though a child, she played an important role as an interpreter between her people and the Cape Dutch. (Sadly, her role between cultures ultimately led to her rejection by both the Khoikhoin and the Dutch, and she died abject and destitute). My artwork begins by imagining that Maria de la Quellerie loved little Krotoa so much that she learnt to speak the child’s language. In the artwork, Maria sings a gentle Khoikhoin lullaby to an out-of-frame, sleeping Krotoa. The lullaby is full of the characteristic click-sounds still found in Nama, an endangered Khoikhoin language spoken in present-day Namibia. We have no record of any Dutch colonist ever learning to speak the language of the Khoikhoin people whose ancient territories they annexed at the Cape. It was always the other way around: the Khoikhoin were forced to speak Dutch. Due to these—and related—pressures the language of the Cape Khoikhoin has long been extinct. In the artwork, we catch Maria in a moment of reverie and realization, singing of her profound connections with this strange pseudo-daughter and the exhilarating potential that exists between two people facing each other across incommensurable cultural universes. Lyric for Secretly I Will Love You More (written by Andrew Putter) Do not fear me little one – welcome into our home! How beautiful you are, little shiny one, with your woolly hair, smelling of sweet buchu. Your differences from me make you so precious! Your smallness belies your significance. Meeting you has changed us forever. I will love you as I love my own children: Secretly I will love you more. The warm summer wind blows and it makes me dream. I dream of your people and my people changing each other. Welcome into our home precious child.
Nama translation of lyric for Secretly I Will Love You More (by Pedro Dausab) Ta !ao ti ‡khariro - //Kore //kare-he sida oms !nâ. Mati koses a exa naparas !abuxa /ûn/kha ‡khon buxuba rahâm. Sa !kharasasib ge. //n_tikose sasa ra !gom/gausa kai. Sa !kharisib ge ra sa !gom /gausasiba ra ‡hûmi kai. Sasa /hau-us ge sida huka-/gui ra /khara/khara. O ta ni /namsi ti oâna ta /nam khemi: ‡Gan!gâsa se ta ni /namsi !nasase. /Gamsa //khanab di ‡oab ta !gom tsî ra //habo kai te. //Hawo tara o ti khoin tsî sa khoin xa ra în /khara. //Ore //hares sida oms !nâ !gom/gausa /_oa.
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