Mari-Mira the Talking House

"Mari-Mira, the Talking House" is a collectible artwork in the form of a book about the Durban leg of a most unusual, evolving transportable village.

As creative a construction as the project it documents, the book is constructed, just like the project, from waste and recyclable materials, e.g. tetra pak (Liqui-Fruit packaging) and cardboard, and contains photographs and visuals of the artists and their constructions.

Layered on colour transparencies, these images literally 'appear' and 'disappear' on and off the pages as they're turned.

The book is hard cover with a Croxley school notebook style and wiro binding at the back.

The fourth leg of this globe-trotting village, Mari-Mira, the Talking House was conceived and constructed as a poetic and lively community centre highlighting the creative energy of the inhabitants of squatter camps that surround South African towns.

The author, together with Jabulani Mhlabini, a story-telling potter, Sibusiso Mbhele, the world famous aeroplane man, and Pat Khanye, the queen of plastic, built the Talking House out of wooden pallets and hanging pompoms assembled as curtains made with plastic bags. They installed a car port as a kind of roof and 'parked' the pallet-cabin underneath it.

The project suggests that a house is a world in movement and that talking is a way to travel.

The Talking House was exhibited in Johannesburg during the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002.

For this they added a Truth and Reconciliation Telephone Booth that visitors could enter.

The booth was linked to the Talking House by a wire and, as a person spoke into a microphone, visitors could hear their voice on the other side, through speakers set in a can of tin flowers hanging from the ceiling.

Mari-Mira installations that preceded the South African creation are: Mari-Mira, the House of Reflection by the Menwar people of Mauritius, Mari-Mira & Mira Mare, the Summer Dependencies in Marseilles and Mari-Mira, the Cultural Complex in Paris.

Mari-Mira continues to travel and after South Africa it moved to Fiji, is currently in Bordeaux and moves to Glasgow in 2009.