A History Of Lateness: Stories From Outer Space
A History Of Lateness is a series of works investigating archival narratives of colonial memory. A decolonial practice is suggested as a body knowledge of "un-archiving", a procedure allowing accessibility and historical memory to be narrated through other sensory means.
Knowledge and historical preservations on voices and music of colonial and anti-colonial productions of the German wars remain often archives that are not transmittable in its descending ancestry through institutional limitations. To 'unarchive' these terrains and sonorous materials the body performs to displace its materiality and memory for in this particular work maps the scores & scripts of film from colonial movies and anti-colonial films later re-inscribed as resistance in the Independence years notably in Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia. Generating a new surface or an atlas of personal vocal premonitions & testimonies of colonial prisoners & entertainers and former musical war productions on coloniality that transform in the revelation of forms of resistance movements often led by African women and their diaspora.
Based on jazz music titles, phonographic recordings of prisoners of war and movie scores used in anti-colonial and resistance movements in wartime Germany, the series builds propositions for monuments for those who remained edited from historical knowledge and may allow different stories to shape the way we see ourselves today.
Knowledge and historical preservations on voices and music of colonial and anti-colonial productions of the German wars remain often archives that are not transmittable in its descending ancestry through institutional limitations. To 'unarchive' these terrains and sonorous materials the body performs to displace its materiality and memory for in this particular work maps the scores & scripts of film from colonial movies and anti-colonial films later re-inscribed as resistance in the Independence years notably in Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia. Generating a new surface or an atlas of personal vocal premonitions & testimonies of colonial prisoners & entertainers and former musical war productions on coloniality that transform in the revelation of forms of resistance movements often led by African women and their diaspora.
Based on jazz music titles, phonographic recordings of prisoners of war and movie scores used in anti-colonial and resistance movements in wartime Germany, the series builds propositions for monuments for those who remained edited from historical knowledge and may allow different stories to shape the way we see ourselves today.
In 1914, a conflict between the German and French colonial armies was triggered in Gabon's town of Mimbeng (Woleu-Ntem, Gabon). The disputes over land, resources, settlement and treaties would push the German settlers in North Gabon to retreat after loosing the battle. The massacre was never given full acknowledgment and burial of the ones who died. During their periods of conflicts in the region, the nature and animals of the forest accompanied their tracks. Over 100 years later, the battle of Mimbeng can be lived through the mimicry screams of parrots, whom at the time would mimic the sounds of the forest which they use as forms of survival and camouflage. Walking through the old debris of the conflict the birds open fire with sounds of battlefield and conversations in French and German spoken by former soldiers. In 1963, the artist's father & friends attempted to build a radio station to smuggle messages and speak to ancestors in the sky to disorientate political opponents but also as a form of resistance against new laws introduced on mobility and land territories shared between tribes. He worked in the plantations as a teenager and would shoot the parrots in the jungle that would scream the conversations of the battle in German to him.
Based on the novel of Lucian De Samosata, "True Histories From Out Of Space" creates a critical narrative on migration, invasion and displacement. The work accompanies the audiences through the memory of the artist's father & grandfather and their experiences of " le nouveau Cameroon", colonial conflicts, ghosts and debris in central west Africa as told by forest parrots. The sounds of the birds and plants trigger a memory soundtrack of the events of Mimbeng over 100 years ago and releases the sound frequencies of the artist's "jungle tracks" into the Moon. Each frequency launched onto the surface of the Moon will release dust shadows to quilt imprints of those trapped voices inside the jungle of the Woleu-Ntem forests.
Based on the novel of Lucian De Samosata, "True Histories From Out Of Space" creates a critical narrative on migration, invasion and displacement. The work accompanies the audiences through the memory of the artist's father & grandfather and their experiences of " le nouveau Cameroon", colonial conflicts, ghosts and debris in central west Africa as told by forest parrots. The sounds of the birds and plants trigger a memory soundtrack of the events of Mimbeng over 100 years ago and releases the sound frequencies of the artist's "jungle tracks" into the Moon. Each frequency launched onto the surface of the Moon will release dust shadows to quilt imprints of those trapped voices inside the jungle of the Woleu-Ntem forests.
Kampnagel Theatre Hamburg
Rhythmanalysis | SAVVY Contemporary
photo: Lea, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, SAVVY Contemporary 2017
Rhythmanalysis | SAVVY Contemporary
photo: Lea, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, SAVVY Contemporary 2017
A History On Lateness (A Kosmos Dictionary on Swedish Emotion)
Featured in Düsseldorfer Spielhaus 2020 | PALS Performance Festival Stockholm 2018 | PRIMARY Nottingham UK 2019
Investigates the domestication of wildlife to create languages of imagined colonial & native life. Based on swedish exploration archives in Cameroon (1883-1913), the work examines the language of choreography and transmission of the colonial perpertuator rather than the native as subject.
Two birds domesticated by Swedish expeditors Waldau & Knutson were trained to constelise the hierarchy of powers and priviledges of colonial life in native rural territories with the aim to preserve swedish phonetics as monuments abroad and commemoration to Swedish monarchy. The men were influenced by the Carib expedition of Friedrich W. A. von Humboldt whom wrote Kosmos (1799), that included a study of a 40 word dictionary of the Mayporé tribe culture & language massacred by Carib Indians but whose language had been transmitted to local rainforests parrots that had been domesticated.
The project deals with the complexities of cultural appropriations and fragmentation in the production of western knowledge through queering the technology of testimonial sound recording formely used as a form to monumentise western tradition, settlement and scientific exploration.
The work responds to the irrationality of transmission, feminist resistance and bodies of imagination through sonic scapes in which the body is entangled in a web of entrapment and transformation through ephemeral materials and memories of resistance through the sciences of nature.
Two birds domesticated by Swedish expeditors Waldau & Knutson were trained to constelise the hierarchy of powers and priviledges of colonial life in native rural territories with the aim to preserve swedish phonetics as monuments abroad and commemoration to Swedish monarchy. The men were influenced by the Carib expedition of Friedrich W. A. von Humboldt whom wrote Kosmos (1799), that included a study of a 40 word dictionary of the Mayporé tribe culture & language massacred by Carib Indians but whose language had been transmitted to local rainforests parrots that had been domesticated.
The project deals with the complexities of cultural appropriations and fragmentation in the production of western knowledge through queering the technology of testimonial sound recording formely used as a form to monumentise western tradition, settlement and scientific exploration.
The work responds to the irrationality of transmission, feminist resistance and bodies of imagination through sonic scapes in which the body is entangled in a web of entrapment and transformation through ephemeral materials and memories of resistance through the sciences of nature.
photos: Denis Romanovski and Hironori_Tsukue
PALS Stockholm Sweden 2018
PALS Stockholm Sweden 2018