Shamica Ruddock (b. 1992, UK) presents a new work-in-progress, Knock Down Pork Knocker.
Ruddock’s practice moves through sound, text and moving image to consider how stories are transmitted and transformed. Rather than seeking a singular root, Ruddock explores the Caribbean as an opaque space where histories of displacement, capture and labour merge. Sound and fiction become ways to navigate the gaps and silences of histories.
Set against the backdrop of Guyana’s mining history, Knock Down Pork Knocker examines the intersection of Caribbean folklore with the lasting spiritual, material and labour legacies of resource extraction following British colonial rule. After the abolition of slavery, Pork Knockers emerged as independent miners seeking fortune along the Guyanese interiors as they navigated the lingering extractive colonial economy.
This new 16mm film follows the miner Kiso as he encounters a river spirit, or Jumbie, while searching for gold. The character of the spirit, drawn from the Massacooramaan of Amerindian lore present in wider Guyanese imaginaries, articulates the fraught transition out of the plantation system and into the precarious labour economies of the post-emancipation era. As the narrator’s cadence flows into the presence of Kiso and Massa, these various approaches act as vessels for critical storytelling. The film unfolds not as a closed narrative but as an open-ended allegory commenting on the overlapping histories of the Caribbean.
Displayed alongside the film is the original film set and hand-whittled puppets of Kiso and Massa.
