This work was presented at the National Arts Festival, South Africa 2023, as part of Koleka Putuma’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award installation. 

Koleka Putuma's The Theatre of Beauty examines the connections between plant medicine, history, memory, and storytelling. 

Whistles Re-Imagined: stand-alone sound installation, and accompaniment for "The Dancing Mushroom". A sonic psychedelic inspired reflection on whistles and whistling in South African culture

Mega-Memory: For video collage of found materials that speak to memory/remembering/connecting with your past. Sonic: Collected media, adverts, jingles, themes songs from 90s and 2000s SABC channels, e-TV

South African Culture Snapshot: For video encapsulating South African culture through dancing in groove, church, at
political rallies, protests etc - a snapshot of South Africa’s relationship with dancing, drinking, and the church.

The project draws on research on psychedelic and indigenous medicine practices and how they have been used to heal individuals, communities, and generational traumas.

Koleka Putuma - Writer, Creator and Art Director 
Haneem Christian - Filmmaker (The Dancing Mushroom)
Robyn Lee - Project Manager

Sound Design extracts - The Theatre of Beauty: Imvuselelo (NAF 2023)

Recalling Roots 
The instrument [African Harp] of my people, the Luo people, found me. These are two explorations:
1. A prompted meditative reflection in an old flat
2. A cover of "Land of Anaka" by Geoffrey Oryema

Land Of Anaka Cover

This sonic journey was a sound accompaniment to blk banaana’s 2021 residency exhibition “OUR BODIES ARE CLOCKS MADE OF WATER, when do we belong?” at LAPA Brixton, JHB founded by Goethe-Institut JHB and VANSA. (Duduetsang Lamola). 

Remnant Wading Space:
conceptualised over telephonic discussions
through space reflecting on time 
piecing together 
Futurities 
threaded with captured pasts: 

black, queer, beyond,
becoming alien, universal, unyielding. 

ancestral souls on the ocean floor
simultaeneously sinking, soaring 
into limbo 

we know, have known, will know 

youth in nostalgia 
anxious dread on what 
we hope and know 
time tells 

Already embodying all
in transition and transcendence 
ever changing 
and piecing 
the other 
together
- dl onen
(24 Nov 2021)

Remnant Wading Space

This was a contribution to SENSA's livestream for 2023 Drone Day. SENSA is the Southern African Network for Sonic Exploration, you can listen to contributions from various Southern African artists at https://sensa-org-za.bandcamp.com/album/drone-day-2023

Some Nebula

Some Nebula - for Drone Day 2023

Koleka Putuma's The Theatre of Beauty examines the connections between plant medicine, history, memory, and storytelling. 

Whistles Re-Imagined: stand-alone sound installation, and accompaniment for "The Dancing Mushroom". A sonic psychedelic inspired reflection on whistles and whistling in South African culture

Mega-Memory: For video collage of found materials that speak to memory/remembering/connecting with your past. Sonic: Collected media, adverts, jingles, themes songs from 90s and 2000s SABC channels, e-TV

South African Culture Snapshot: For video encapsulating South African culture through dancing in groove, church, at
political rallies, protests etc - a snapshot of South Africa’s relationship with dancing, drinking, and the church.

This work was presented at the National Arts Festival, South Africa 2023, as part of Koleka Putuma’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award installation. 

The project draws on research on psychedelic and indigenous medicine practices and how they have been used to heal individuals, communities, and generational traumas.

Koleka Putuma - Writer, Creator and Art Director 
Haneem Christian - Filmmaker (The Dancing Mushroom)
Robyn Lee - Project Manager

South Africa culture snapshot

Mega-Memory

Whistles Re-Imagined

This was a contribution to SENSA's livestream for 2024 Drone Day. SENSA is the Southern African Network for Sonic Exploration, you can listen to contributions from various Southern African artists at https://sensa-org-za.bandcamp.com/album/drone-day-2024

About this particular work:
Made with processed virtual instruments: ‘gently glitching organ’ and ‘aftermath’ from Logic Pro’s Alchemy library, it’s just two long notes an A and E, with lots of automated effects. The thought throughout, thinking about the world “it shouldn’t have to be like this” and as the title says "ruminating, internally screaming, unnecessary death"

Ruminating, Internally Screaming, Unnecessary Death - for Drone Day 2024

A few excerpts of the soundscapes I designed for Dara Beth's heartfelt and witty stage play 'all my ex-lovers are dead':

A selected text for Artscape’s New Voices Programme in 2021 and STAND Foundation’s Pen To Paper Programme in association with NATi and Vrystaat Kunstefees in 2022, ‘all my ex-lovers are dead’ was written slowly, over the course of six years–pieced together from scrap paper prose scribbled at the edges of receipts, woven together with unfinished voice memos saved on and downloaded from multiple phones, and laced with more internal monologues than any single person should allow themselves to indulge in.

The 2024 National Arts Festival rendition is performed by Qondiswa James.

No Boundaries/The Sun (Closing)

Corn Chip And Dip (Past Version)

Wedding Bells (Opening)

“transported anthrophonies” was played in ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien’s Next Generation Festival June 5th - 8th, 2024. Featured in concert I, 5:00pm via HfG/ Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Anthrophony relates to any sounds produced by human beings or their creations. 'trans' in this context is refers ro transhemispheric transmissions across space through time. Many sounds from public transport. Traversing sounds collected as reflections of their environments and as signifyers of histories, demographics, socio-economics, and state practices.

This work is a juxtaposition of processed field recordings of Woodstock, Cape Town and particularly Neükolln, Berlin. Moments of the passing drums of a Turkish wedding procession meeting the brass of the Kaapse Klopse, to the Call to Prayer, and children singing on St Matin’s Day, to the beeps of the Bahns and resonant tones of the every-blaring sirens and church bells. 

When what was once alien becomes familiar, we stop actively listening and merely hear the sounds in a space. A kind of reconstruction to shift from hearing to active listening.

“transported anthrophonies” is a condensed version of transanthrophonies:
1 for broadcast: Sound Art from Southern Africa Deutschlandfunk Kultur DLFK https://www.hoerspielundfeature.de/oscillations-1-4-100.html 
2 for loop in installation: sounding the body as a site in Oscillations Exhibition, 19.04 - 27.4, Akademie der Künste, https://www.adk.de/de/programm/?we_objectID=66357

Denise

Pinned to spotlight

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