Past is Present and Connects Us to the Future

In collaboration with Red Clay, artists Julian Bozeman and Sarah Conarro (aka Mutual Phase) worked with community to create 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 in Tamale this August.

Within The Parliament of Ghosts, community members built a living archive. Real-time cameras captured painting gestures and projected them onto walls where previous participants' completed work already hung—collapsing past and present into the same visual moment.

Over the month, twenty-four large-scale paintings emerged alongside twelve collaborative mobiles constructed from discarded materials. Local dancers and Breakers (Tamale's breakdancing troupe) performed within the projection space. Natural dye workshops produced fabric samples. Song-making sessions filled Red Clay's decommissioned trains and airplanes, creating a collective composition.

The project brought together people of all ages and skill levels. Glass drilling, paper mache, painting, dancing, singing—each contribution became part of the accumulating work. Everyone present became collaborators.

How do our gestures today shape what tomorrow inherits? Past is Present explored this question through making together, revealing how individual actions fold into collective memory and how temporal boundaries can collapse through projection and presence.