A field-research presentation by Lorenzo Graf The Spectral Infrastructure in Emeka Ogboh’s Lagos Soundscapes

Where once a rooster used to sing, now the generators supplying a telecommunications company buzz. In Lagos, an infrastructure is being laid for serving a streamlined notion of progress to reassure investors and attract capital. The Lagosian sound ecology has since registered a shift. Confronting the sound-art pieces that Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh displayed in the exhibition ‘This is Lagos’ (2009) allows for tracing and questioning this change. During his field research, accompanied by a landscape architect, Okechukwu Orji, Lorenzo Graf has returned to the places of Ogboh’s original recordings and switched on the microphone again. Drawing from the concept of ‘spectral infrastructure’ by the collective freethought, this impulse presentation aims at sharing the first findings of his research on sound art and gentrification. An open discussion is meant to be a key component of the event.

Lorenzo Graf is a graduate student of Curatorial Studies at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt (Germany), writing his thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Antje Krause-Wahl. He has curated exhibitions at MEWO Kunsthalle and at Goethe-Institut Cyprus. His field research in Lagos is hosted by the Department of Architecture of the University of Lagos, and by the School of Media and Communication of Pan-Atlantic University.
Lead internal collaborators for Department of Architecture, University of Lagos - Dr Anthony Iweka (Associate Professor) & Dr Bolawole Ogunbodede (Senior Lecturer).