incantations

thulhu thu thu, before the sun harms you

Incantation: Lamin Fofana
Inscription: On the process of de-solidifcation of soil in environmental catastrophes. Especially in West Africa and in the Caribbean (see 2017 Sierra Leone mudslides and hurricanes in the Caribbean — Puerto Rico, Dominica and Bahamas). I’m thinking about “Erosion”, soil erosion, mudslides, and the devastation of the environment and destruction of human life. Now to the voice, if the earth could speak… subterranean rumblings, peat harvests, topsoil, and mud.

Incantation of Fear: Odete
This incantation is a kind of script to re-enact my childhood discovery of magic in the north of Portugal, where I come from. Surrounded by misty air and moustached ladies, I learned my way into my own body. Their superstitions became my path to a gendered body and that path lead me to a mythology far beneath the earth, far hidden in the fluids of my organism.

Incantation: Ayesha Hameed/Elvin Brandhi
Seafixation

Incantation: Pedro Neves Marquez/Raw Forest
Tropical Poltergeist (for Adam and Zack Khalil)

Incantation: Romy Rüegger
The Playgrounds

Incantation: Margarida Mendes
aerial fire

Incantation: Fundación Mareia
Entrega Sonora: We can imagine the moments just by listening to the textures of the sound in the environment; in this occasion with sounds of the urban-rural landscapes of the Colombian Pacific, where the dawn gives us the welcome to one more day of life. We re-signify our biocultural territories with our existence.

biographies
Lamin Fofana is an electronic producer, DJ and artist. His instrumental electronic music contrasts the reality of our world with what’s beyond and explores questions of movement, migration, alienation, and belonging. He runs the Sci-Fi & Fantasy label which links techno back to the real world, to bridge aesthetics with socio-economics, with ocean currents, with stale bread and dirty water.

Raw Forest is one of Margarida Magalhães’ alter-egos that was born around 2010 in cybernetic space. Lately, her work has been manifesting itself mostly through sound, creating landscapes and environments by the means of immersive electronic music. Her landscapes arise from the ruins of past digital utopias and her music has been more and more influenced by this environment of disillusion and collapse, shaped by the present dystopian scenery.

Mareia Foundation, a women collective of artists/humanists who work with participatory research-action with a focus on race, gender, environmental and sonic-embodiment. It is art as a vehicle of social transformation, for a revitalisation of ancestral practices/knowledges through ethnoeducative and emancipatory methodologies, and of holistic healing that empowers the resilience and dignity of the Colombian Pacific.

Ayesha Hameed’s moving image, performance and written work explore contemporary borders and migration, critical race theory, Walter Benjamin and visual cultures of the Black Atlantic. Her projects Black Atlantis and A Rough History (of the destruction of fingerprints) have been performed and exhibited internationally. She is the co-editor of Futures and Fictions (Repeater 2017), and is currently the Programme Leader for the MA in Contemporary Art Theory in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London. Ayesha is collaborating with Elvin Brandhi, an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend Wales, making auto-tune blast beats from field recordings, tapes, instruments and voice. Live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Other main projects include Yeah You, INSIN in collaboration with Bashar Suileman.

Elvin Brandhi an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend Wales, making auto-tune blast beats from field recordings, tapes, instruments and voice. Live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Other main projects include Yeah You, INSIN in collaboration with Bashar Suileman.

Pedro Neves Marques is a visual artist, filmmaker, and writer. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, he lives in New York since 2012. Often times placed in Brazil, his work ranges from fiction, in the form of narrative films and short stories, to theoretical writings between art, cinema, and anthropology. Heavily influenced by cosmopolitics and feminist historians of science, his stories highlight the clash between disputing images of nature, technology, and gender. In all of them, science fiction is key to thinking both past histories of colonization and the possibility of non-Western futures.

Odete is a performer, writer, visual artist and DJ who uses her own life—particularly her experience as a trans woman—as material for her practice. Her DJ sets draw out the relationships between different points in queer music history using vogue claps, punk screams and diva vocals, pop, politics and erratically pounding beats.

Romy Rüegger develops performances, audio works and writings that consider how we move and communicate in social space, and the institutions and structures that control and restrict these actions. Her work is often site-specific and made in collaboration with other artists, creating sites of shared listening, encounter and unlearning that counter accepted narratives and value systems.