In The Midst

This process-based materials study is an exploration into the ways we create and document soundscapes, as an access point into a shared inheritance that is preserved through body memory. Using an antidisciplinary approach to situate our knowledge of bark cloth and sound production as core functions of memory work, we are curious about the experimental processes of textured, and sonic art-making, that perform as a conduit to an organic archive. Experimenting with using video and sound to project memory on bark cloth paper, which comes heavy with its own histories. Bark cloth is a heritage material made from the Mutuba tree, using centuries old traditions mainly practiced in Buganda, the central region of Uganda. One tree can be skinned several times, in a continuation and preservation of life.
Our works are inspired by and made for our communities. Both of us lensing our practices through mother ties, going back to beginnings, and inviting the women and queer-identified we have found family in to journey with us. Nothing is more dangerous, in this time characterized by the callous individuality that places us all on a hierarchical ladder of access to basic life sustaining ways of being, than being a communalist. Than recognising the innate interconnectedness of us all, especially at our marginalised intersections.

We might sound sometimes like three generations before us (if we view time in such a linear manner), and truly we wear their faces as well, but make no mistake, we are new. We are old things that are making new ways. We are new things that are seeking old ways. If we flatten time and view these lives from a vantage point, we see all the places where the overlaps sync in pattern, but also the spaces between, where we slip our fingers and tongues in remaking.

Mapped histories are of interest to us as well, experimenting with cartography as a lens scope and sound format. through which to probe the layers of shared community history in Brixton, using projection as a way to transmute body memory into future imagery. We engaged the community of sound, video, fiber, and textile artists and learned how they are making work within this context, and how their lived experience contributes to building a document of memory within the work that we all do. 

With remembrance as the ethos, and curiosity as a driving force, we use play and experimentation to the ends of a fun, joy filled experience of collective art making that gathers from our communities, across time and space. The promise of community that holds space for expansion, for alternative gazes, and listening in safety at LAPA in Brixton felt like an opportunity for us to participate in work that is in service of the ideal of collective intimacy and healing. 

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. 

Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, paper presented at Chicago’s Modern Language Association, 1977.
© Andy Mkosi In The Midst Image Gallery