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transcript |  who am i? | up

I’m bound betwixt and between a city church located on St Michael’s Row and a tall financial structure. I stand opposite a popular discount place and an institute of fashion and design. An attorney’s office faces me. People of all generations, classes, creeds and nationalities hustle back and forth in front of me during the day, washing vehicles, shopping, riding bicycles, driving. Can you hear their sounds?

My walls are old and gray; my shutter windows, once pure white, now dingy and broken. Sometimes the pigeons make me their home. I have been designated a Barbados National Trust property, thus my blue and white tattoo. I contain many secrets, many silent secret symbols, but for only those who were initiated behind my gray, sacred, mystic walls. Men in black often visit me; they live and guard my most sacred secrets. And for the uninitiated... hmmmmm…oh well, they always speculate, some negative, some positive. But they don’t truly understand me because they are uninitiated.

I was born in 1740, and I live on Spry Street. Who, or what, am I? If you shall find me, I will, in turn, read you your mystic rites.

artist profile | rodney ifill | up

Rodney Ifill’s museum background and great personal appreciation for Barbados’ heritage sites inspired him to create two separate historically-based soundscapes for the whisperpost project. He selected the former Fort Willoughby fortification (the current home of the Barbados Coast Guard headquarters) and the Masonic Lodge, situated on Spry Street (currently owned by the Central Bank of Barbados, Tom Adams Financial Centre). He states that he chose these sites because he has “always had a particular… interest in Fraternalism and the Order” and is also “very fond of the military fortifications of Barbados.” In 2000 – 2002, during his internship at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, he was given the opportunity to research the military fortifications of Barbados for the Organization of the Wider Caribbean on Monuments and Sites (CARIMOS), an organization created in 1982 to encourage preservation works and to make known the cultural heritage of the Caribbean region. This research proved useful in the creation of his soundscapes.

A painter and cartoonist, Rodney Ifill is currently Cultural Officer with responsibility for the Visual Arts at the National Cultural Foundation in Barbados. He coordinates the NIFCA and Crop Over National Art Exhibitions as well as performing a key role with Cultural Developmental programs. He holds an Associate degree in Applied Arts / Art Education from the Barbados Community College along with a Certificate in Museum Studies from the Commonwealth Museums Association, Canada. He is also Vice-President of Barbados’ ICOM Committee, a museum and heritage organization.