Voltaire and Spinoza

Voltaire and Spinoza were the names of my childhood 'pet' geese. In studying sites of spectacle, or staged entertainment environments. I began to reflect on my very first site-of-spectacle, where I would world-build my own fantasies. This is the front yard of my Johannesburg home, in my thesis I reflected on the pet geese who co-habited the space. The backyard had peach trees, most of which were barren. “After all, the home sat left on Orchard Road. The trees remain reliable wayfinders. Next to the trees blighted by leaf curl, we kept our two pet geese, named after canonised men: Voltaire and Spinoza. They were both male, but every year they would monogamously prepare a nest for an egg that could not come. Near the brooding geese and near a lone yet abundant mulberry tree was a Wendy-House where I would teach a small school of imaginary friends while fiddling with my purple-stained feet. I had been instructed to let the berry ink dry before entering the house again.” This swan is aluminium forged over a cement swan-planter but through the repeated hammering, I steal the serial image of the object and re-use it to feed my own nostalgic fantasies and thus, symbolic machine.