Afro-Sonic Mapping: Tracing Aural Histories via Sonic Transmigrations
Exhibition, concert, talks, performances
Nov 1–17, 2019, HKW, Haus der Kulturen der Welt
(in conjunction with the exhibition Spectral-White. The Appearance of Colonial-Era Europeans)
The artist and musician Satch Hoyt takes music recordings from Angola and the Congo made by European anthropologists between 1890 and 1907 as the starting point for his project Afro-Sonic Mapping. He perceives them as acoustic maps of history. Hoyt takes them back to their places of origin and traces the sounds of the African diaspora as far as today’s music scenes in the African lusophone triangle between Luanda, Salvador da Bahia and Lisbon. Together with musicians from the post-colonial cities, he searches for links to contemporary urban rhythms and creates new compositions.
How did post-colonial appropriations and transatlantic transfer processes become inscribed in contemporary rhythms? What sonic affinities are there between Dakar and New Orleans, Lagos and Kingston? At HKW Satch Hoyt presents the many collaborations and results of his research travels in talks, sound performances, a concert and an exhibition of video interviews, sound compositions and paintings that can be read as musical scores.
Satch Hoyt is a visual artist and musician living in Berlin. His projects are related to the transnational African diaspora and revolve around the cultural and political role of sonicity. By combining music, art and historical narrative, he has developed a complex of works that explore what he calls the “migration of the eternal African sonic signifier.”
More information: hkw.de