CV07 — Swahili Coast Customs House
Version 2.0.0

An imagined customs house on an East African harbour at the turn of the monsoon: coral-stone arches, ledgers and scales, sea light on the ceiling, and officials whose slow courtesy governs the passage of cargo, rumour and beautiful strangers.

SEMANTIC SEED

Create work that is composed, consequential, alluring, and distinctly itself. Use this semantic seed as an aesthetic starting point. Interpret it through your medium, letting its character guide the discoveries you make as the work develops. Keep the place adult and dramatic: authority is its register, and charge is its constant.

Imagine a customs house on an East African harbour, built of coral stone with deep arches and a carved door that has stood open through centuries of tide. Let sea light play on the ceiling, reflected from the water through louvred windows, and let the air carry salt, rope, warm stone and old paper. Give the work the ceremony of a port: ledgers, scales, stamps and seals; officials in pressed cotton; cargo and waiting travellers crossing the same floor. Let the pace be slow and exact, with courtesy as the lubricant of authority and gossip as the other kind of customs. Show the monsoon's turn in the light and the shipping, in the manner of people who watch the horizon for cause. Adult charge lies in what is declared and what is not, in the held breath before a signature, and in a room where everyone is, in some way, being appraised.

SEMANTIC TAGS

coral-stone arches; sea light on ceiling; ledgers and seals; monsoon turn; slow courtesy; what is declared

ARRIVAL AND CHARGE

A woman in silk the colour of the harbour, arriving from the quay with a trunk that will take days to clear, stands in the reflected water-light while every official suddenly finds her papers fascinating. The port is accustomed to unexplained arrivals, so her glamour is a sign of weather, not a scandal.
