A Ballet of Spatial Form

In many ways I see Carnival as a massive ballet of spatial form. Forms morph and stretch. They repeat and engulf you, blind you and release you. Let's think about it for a moment.

Where i am standing - in the middle of the street on Carnival Tuesday afternoon - this is my ground. It is ground I do not conquer at any other time of year. My ground is baptised in paint, feathers and sequins from J'ouvert and the days of dance.

My walls have moved. The limits of me experience have shifted. The houses and businesses that I have occupied in past stand silent witness to my passing. Now lining those silent walls are a parasitic strip of aromatic foods, cold drinks and local crafts. A Service belt on the pavement - strapped to fences. Even these silent walls of year round businesses wear their own ephemeral mask for these days. Closer around me though, my vision undulates. At one moment i cannot see anything but people around me: in masks and ecstatic behaviours. But the next moment a feathered arm has lifted and I can see Adam Smith Square. This movement and shifting and dancing and jostling hypnotises me. My city I see through these frames. For release I look to the sky above me. I see blue blue sky and wings of a Carnival queen extending above me.

But it's not only the undulating band that shapes the borders of this experience. The morphology of the city differentiates attitudes. The rooms of the city are its neighbourhoods. Ariapita Avenue is a place of beginnings – where people trickle onto the road from their camps. It is a long and narrow corridor into the old city. There is a momentum that gathers there – shooting toward Lapeyrose. Lapeyrose cemetery is surrounded by high yellow walls. It creates a threshold between Woodbrook and Downtown Port-of-Spain. The streets of downtown Port-of-Spain are narrower, with historic buildings and stories rising above. It is a confined, intense and multi-layered space of powerful re-imagination: Re-imagining the Red House and Woodford Square.

To be continued…

Excerpt from Another Life by Derek Walcott :

begin again,

from what we have always known, nothing,

from that carnal slime of the garden...

by this aurgery of ibises

flying at evening from the melting trees,

while the silver-hammered charger of the marsh light

brings toward us, again and agains, in beaten scrolls

nothing, then nothing,

and then nothing. (286-87)

Anatomy of a festival

With this set of diagrams, I have attempted to dissect the main urban characteristics of Trinidad’s Carnival. The photographs follow the main carnival route, as shown in the key map in red.

By separating the individual parts that are specific to the festival, it’s anatomy becomes quite clear. The next stage of this set of diagrams will be to add a layer of information about the places in the city in which theses images are taken.

These 12 diagrams walk you through Port of Spain. The places they are taken are listed below, in order of appearance:

Ariapita Avenue

Adam Smith Square

Park Street (outside of Lapeyrose cemetery)

St. Vincent Street upper

St. Vincent Street Lower

Independence Square

Twin Towers (outside Central Bank Trinidad)

South Quay lower

South Quay Judging Point

Rosary Junction

Charlotte Street

Queens Park Savannah