The sound instalaltion will be launched in parallel at the gallery and at 16:00 on Cashmere Radio.
A Sacred Story at the Tree of Life (Credo Mutwa, Indaba My Children) is a program series and a sound installation hosted by Listening at Pungwe, a collaborative project by Memory Biwa and Robert Machiri. Listening at Pungwe pivots on circulatory aural imaginings and practices on southern Africa, and beyond, to produce publics and alternative spaces of sociality. With a focus on archives and their sonic surplus, Pungwe produces multi-media spaces for collective listening.
The voices you are hearing are of orators: Lena Fender, who recites the opening and closing of a story, a call into and from the story-world. Her voice recorded in Okahandja, central Namibia, is a continuous motif in our work, and is heard on a loop on loudspeaker, alongside Credo Mutwa. Traces, and excerpts from our record collection, and audio surrounding Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo, Livingstone and Harare, are arranged on the sound-system speakers. The chalk inscription wrapped onto the black wall echoes the surround cacophony.
Over a period of six weeks the gallery transforms into a portal for the platform, Listening at Pungwe. Pungwe is an occasion where sound system culture is approached as a mo(nu)ment of auditory, corporeal and sociocultural frequencies. The platform traces spatiality through a complex web of movements that are often embodied and transferred through sound.
With: Listening at Pungwe, Jumoke Adeyanju, blk banaana, Malik Ntone Edjabe aka Hypocrite, Banji Chona, Percy Zvomuya, Eiliyas, Savanna Morgan, Elsa M’Bala aka A.M.E.T., Day Eve aka audio slut, Melanelle B.C. Hémêfa, Eric Vaughn, Zen Marie.
Curatorial Ensemble: Memory Biwa, Robert Machiri, Jumoke Adeyanju, Nikola Hartl
Sound System: John Broback
