sonic remappings of the congo river (kinshasa and brazzaville)
multi-channel audio 2019
With support from Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) Johannesburg, I traveled to Kinshasa and Brazzaville to record sounds of both urban areas, with a particular focus on areas adjacent to the river. News reports in 2019 stated that funds had been secured to construct a bridge connecting the two cities, placing them, and the areas around the river in particular, in a state of suspended transition. The recordings act as a document of a moment in time and place, as well as raw material to be transformed into a new, speculative, fictional place or set of networked places.
How Far is a multichannel sound installation made of the sonic material collected on the trip. The realities represented in the recordings are fragmented, blended, superimposed, deconstructed and reconstructed into an imagined space of impressions of two absolutely unique environments. A version was shown at the Rhyzomes exhibition at Base sous Marine, Bordeaux, FR (cur. Paula Nascimiento) and Influenzart in Johannesburg, SA (cur. Nelisiwe Xaba).
