Larry Achiampong

LA

Untitled / Wreath (I, II) & Back To Church (I, II, III)

Untitled is a sound installation by Larry Achiampong that expands on his current research on the incongruence of faith practices that straddle western and non-western influences, the mutations of traditions and language that are birthed as a result of colonisation, and how these affect people today. In particular, he explores Christian imperialism and impact of this imported religion on his tribe - The Ashanti.

Conceived during Achiampong’s year-long Sound and Music embedded residency at the British Library Sound Archive (2016 - 2017), Untitled highlights the importance of archives and personal heritage. The work resulted in the creation of a new vinyl LP consisting of audio tracks created from field recordings (Back to Church I, II, III) made with Christ Reformed Church in Peckham (in association with South London Gallery) and an original synth-built score (Wreath I, II). The blending of this audio with the churches in Venice is aimed at bridging connections with the community hall spaces that the artist used to worship in as a child, highlighting issues surrounding communal spaces, poverty, bodily (and vocal) gestures and omnipresence.

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Larry Achiampong has exhibited, performed and presented projects internationally including Tate Britain/Modern, London; Hauptbahnhof (dOCUMENTA 13), Kassel; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Accra. He presented work in the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale.

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www.larryachiampong.co.uk ↗︎

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Song-Ming Ang

SMA

Trade Winds (Venice) & No Man’s Band

Trade Winds (Venice) comprises 50 readings of the word ‘Venice’ in 50 different languages. This audio recording references the historical importance of Venice as a trade and financial centre. Read out as a list by a female and male voice, one name succeeds another as the work alludes to the waves surrounding the island – each one different but the same, and connected to one another.

No Man’s Band consists of recordings of school band rehearsals before they formally begin, capturing moments of student chatter and instrument practice. Noise, silence, and music sit alongside each other as individual warm-ups merge into collective improvisations. A total of 4 hours of audio was recorded from 15 Singaporean school bands. This is a 10-minute selection from one of the schools.

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Song-Ming Ang makes art revolving around the everyday and popular culture, with sound as a recurrent interest. His works have been presented at Camden Arts Centre (London), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), Museum Voorlinden (Wassenaar), 3rd Singapore Biennale, and 14th Istanbul Biennial.

Song Ming Ang is currently showing Music for Everyone: Variations on a Theme in the Singapore Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale.

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www.circadiansongs.com ↗︎

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Barby Asante

BA

A Declaration Of Independence: For Ama. For Aba. For Khadija And Mary

Drawing on her work currently on display at the Diaspora Pavilion As Always A Painful Declaration: For Ama. For Aba. For Charlotte And Adjoa. Preface: Intimacy And Distance, Asante has created this piece as a dedication to artist Khadija Saye and her mother Mary Mendy who died in the Grenfell Fire on June 14th 2017, London. Asante's work takes its inspiration from Ama Ata Aidoo's poem As Always, A Painful Declaration Of Independence, as a way to collectively and performatively collect and archive stories of women of colour as they navigate a world of white supremacist hetero-patriarchy and how they attempt to be-come in a world where their survival is not promised. This piece was written two days after the Grenfell Fire and was first performed at the Feminist Emergencies Conference at Birkbeck, University of London.

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Barby Asante is an artist, curator and educator whose work seeks to create spaces for dialogue, collective thinking, ritual and re-enactment. Using archival material in the broadest sense, she is interested in breaking down the language of the archive to interrupt, interrogate and explore the effects and possibilities of the unheard and the missing. She presented work in the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

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Chi Bagtas

CB

Erlinda, Can I Speak To You Po,

Erlinda, Can I Speak To You Po, contemplates the ideas of a fragmented temporary space and experience. As a response to the artist’s continuous engagement with notions of transnationalism and her diasporic state (in this instance Venice, London and Manila), the work is in the form of a letter dedicated to her grandmother. Here she reflects on personal experiences during her stay in Venice. Spoken in her mother tongue Tagalog and English, as well as using samples and collected material from her stay, the work seeks to create a resonance with the listener as they too walk around this particular area.

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Chi Bagtas is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice consists of sculpture, video, sound and performance. Her practice specifically, explores notions of transnational consciousness in relation to her peripatetic upbringing whilst investigating the palpability of interactions and relationship outcomes that happen through a participatory practice.

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Yason Banal

YB

: :

Representation and perception hover between abstraction and documentary tradition, traditions that deploy technology, and technology that is in turn utilized by eceonomic, social and political forces. How does one see, hear and sense the abstract mechanism behind the documentary effect, and conversely the documentary mechanism within the abstract effect?

The document in this instance is a retelling of a fairy tale using local queer speak, where the Venice Biennale serves as contemporary allegory and spectacle, and how queer translation becomes an abstracting site of resistance and generosity, play and imagination.

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Yason Banal's practice traverses media and concerns, exploring links and refractions among seemingly divergent systems. He has exhibited widely including Tate Modern, Frieze Projects, Singapore Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Bangkok Art and Culture Center and Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, and has curated for Osage Art Foundation, Andy Warhol Museum and the Asia-Pacific Triennial.

Yason Banals work was specific to the 57th Venice Biennale and is no longer available.

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Libita Clayton / Benjamin One

LC/BO

ACQUA ALTA II

From the diaphragm come guts and nerve, collapsing respiratory muscle and vocalise, pace and pant. Opera singers Anne Fridal (soprano) and Ronald Samm (tenor) of the Black British Classical Foundation recite 2 worded scores based on memory, trace, scale and flood. The warm ups and failures surrounding these scores have been cut-up, cut-out and stitched together.

Libita Clayton samples components of speech. Partly to re-enact states of ritual and in part to stutter structure. She has worked with vocalist and producer Benjamin One on several collaborative projects. Both artists explore duality with rhythm, texture and loops - referencing water, breath and energy. Clunking, punk and classical techniques, into space, form and dysfunction. ACQUA ALTA II is part of a larger body of work by Clayton titled Typical-Political - A Domestic Riot, currently showing in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice.

We encourage a forward motion, and thoughts of empowerment when listening.

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Libita Clayton’s practice is found somewhere in the cracks. Recent collaborations include: Bland Choreography, New Year / New Noise 4, Arnolfini; RESIST FLOW, (Gal-Dem) Victoria and Albert Museum; 1,2,1,2, //// Black- Voices Opera, Royal West Academy of England, UK. She exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale. Benjamin One comes from a grassroots graffiti culture, true to the DIY lifestyle; he has been immersed in the pirate radio and Hip Hop scene for the last 20 years. Sound designer, vocalist, producer, and collaborator on projects including: Universal Magnetic, Rebel Instinct, Ghost Locust and Abf films.

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www.libitaclayton.co.uk ↗︎ www.homehomeplaceplace.tumblr.com ↗︎ www.universalmagneticradio.bandcamp.com ↗︎

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Lizza May David

LMD

To Go Overseas

TO GO OVERSEAS
TO TAKE CARE
TO WORK ABROAD
TO WRITE A LETTER
TO REMEMBER
TO MAINTAIN HOPE
TO CRY
TO HAVE A BETTER LIFE
TO SEARCH FOR GREENER PASTURES
TO COME OUT WITH SOMETHING BETTER
TO FORGET
TO COME BACK
TO SACRIFICE
TO SUFFER
TO SEE DIFFERENT THINGS

To Go Overseas gathers intergenerational voices on how leaving the homeland affects familial and cultural bonds of Filipinos. Interweaving personal, fictional, found and documentary footage with readings of scientific texts endangered plants, the voices construct an expanded narrative about love, loss and collective experience, staged on the waters of Venice and where the water meets land.

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Lizza May David’s previous work has been autobiographical and investigates issues of identity, labour/migration and memory. Currently she juxtaposes media-based materials with a studio-based painting practice in order to question indexical affinities and investigate different perspectives on painting within a transnational framework. David studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and University of Arts Berlin, Germany.

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www.lizzamaydavid.com ↗︎

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Kimathi Donkor

KD

History Repeating In The Presence Of Khadija Saye

History Repeating In The Presence Of Khadija Saye reworks my contribution to a panel discussion on Black Activism and Art held with Sonia Boyce, Jacob V Joyce and Michael McMillan at London’s Royal Academy in April 2017. I had spoken about three artworks addressing historic black women who faced prejudice and injustice. Afterwards, during the reception, I again met Khadija Saye, the young artist of Gambian heritage who, alongside myself and 17 others was participating in the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. However, on June 14th, shortly after the opening of the pavilion, Khadija, her mother Mary Mendy and at least 78 other residents of the Grenfell tower in London were killed in a disastrous fire. In the ensuing crisis, national attention focused on concerns that the inferno was caused by criminal negligence in the refurbishment of the tower - where occupants were disproportionately low-income women from Diaspora communities.

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Dr Kimathi Donkor’s work has featured in solo and group exhibitions, including the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), The New Art Exchange (Nottingham, 2017), Gallery MOMO in Johannesburg (2015), Rivington Place (London, 2012), the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and the Bettie Morton Gallery (London, 2004).

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www.kimathidonkor.net ↗︎

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bani haykal

BH

Obituary for Privacy

“Citizens within modulated democracies — citizens who are subject to pervasively distributed surveillance and modulation by powerful commercial and political interests — increasingly will lack the ability to form and pursue meaningful agendas for human flourishing.” - Julie Cohen (What Privacy Is For)

I grew up listening to disembodied voices laughing at an image. Canned laughter was a control mechanism to influence the effectiveness of a humorous idea. Much like the present state of democracies in several parts of the world, organising and informing public opinion on privacy and its politics is like a sitcom: the same actors involved preach dichotomous world views on what is right and wrong. But the magic behind these modulated political stages is an instrument, the Laff Box, operated by a ghost actor, a phantom that projects a manufactured consensus, the illusion of public opinion. My proposition is to liberate the phantom. Reveal the mechanism that has shaped public opinion on privacy and surveillance so that as society we can discuss the gaps and distortions of our shared anxieties.

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bani haykal experiments with text + music. As an artist, composer and musician, bani considers music (making / processes) as a metaphor for cybernetics and his projects revolve around modes of interfacing and interaction in feedback / feedforward mechanisms. He is a member of b-quartet and Soundpainting ensemble Erik Satay & The Kampong Arkestra.

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Annie Jael Kwan / Lynn Lu

AK/LL

Water Carries No Stain

This sound piece activates memories of a live performance by Lynn Lu presented in Venice in May 2017, as part of ‘MAP: Waterways’, a performance programme that reflected on diaspora via the water routes of Venice weaving histories that extend beyond the island's boundaries through trade and the travel of goods and people since the 14th century. Consisting of layered excerpts from curatorial research and notes, the artist’s texts based on Marco Polo’s narrative, and her grandmother's escape from China on a cargo ship, the piece evokes how water is a path for personal and public memories that pass on via intergenerational storytelling, with bodies as live archival repositories.

The work will be distributed through a selection of sites where water, still, flowing, and collected are present.

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Annie Jael Kwan / Lynn Lu A collaboration between visual and performance artist, Lynn Lu and independent curator, Annie Jael Kwan, who have worked together on a number of projects exploring the spaces of in-between and proximities. Both Lu and Kwan work between Singapore and London, with the many exchanges between cultural and living contexts informing their critical perspectives.

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www.movement-archive-performance.com/portfolio/map1-waterways ↗︎
www.lynnlu.info ↗︎
www.anniejaelkwan.com ↗︎

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Anthony Lam

AL

Crossings (I, II, III)

The views are mine alone. They describe a place that has undergone a massive and dramatic transformation over the past three decades. Material, economic, environmental, class, diversity, cultural... reflective of the transitional shift(s) in society during the postwar period. As the new towers materialized, replacing the old wharfs, dockyards and histories, these narrative first person pieces reflect on the new realities for some that can be found within the margins of place. These constructed (reality) fictions have been driven by a need to comment on the dramatic changes driven by new economics, capital and the entitlement of wealth creation and attainment, and look to the past for insights into the present. It is a recovering process. How does one begin to understand with clarity and focus the bigger forces at play, given such intensity of development and renewal? What ultimately is the impact on people?

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Anthony Lam is a photographer and university senior lecturer who is engaged with interrogating, exploring and expanding his relationship to photography and society. Lam’s diverse practice is located within conceptual, representational and social concerns, addressing issues of identity, culture and place from a personal and social political viewpoint.

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susan pui san lok

SPSL

Songs VI (2017)

Songs VI is the latest of several audio interludes ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, in which instances of the lyric ‘golden’ collide to produce condensed choruses at turns joyful, plaintive, and wistful. Songs I-VI (2005-17) is one strand of an ongoing project called Golden, which includes moving image (Vistas, Years), installation (Untitled (Ballroom), (Pavilion), (Shower)), and participatory performances (Mobile Ballroom, Mobile Chorus). Songs VI is based on fifty tracks nominated by fellow artists and curators associated with the Diaspora Pavilion.

Thanks to: Larry Achiampong, Kat Anderson, Barby Asante, Chi Bagtas, David A. Bailey, Adelaide Bannerman, Sokari Douglas Camp, Libita Clayton, Kimathi Donkor, Ellen Gallagher, Enam Gbewonyo, Nicola Green, Joy Gregory, Melanie Keen, Dave Lewis, Hew Locke, Gabria Lupone, Claire Oboussier, Vong Phaophanit, Khadija Saye, Sunil Shah, Erika Tan, Jessica Taylor, Barbara Walker, and Abbas Zahedi.

Songs VI is dedicated to the Diaspora Pavilion, in memory of Khadija Saye.

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susan pui san lok is an artist and writer, working across installation, moving image, sound, performance and text. She exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale. Other projects include Deviant Practice at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Black Artists and Modernism at UAL and Middlesex University.

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www.susanpuisanlok.com ↗︎

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Adam Patterson

AP

Tourism Is The Work Of The Devil

The Streets of Venice, in accommodating the cultural representations of nation states, become an ordered collected archipelago of disparate cultural thought emerging in a globalised hierarchy. Tourism is the Work of the Devil offers the guidance and narration of a critical de-colonial voice in navigating the islands of thought as presented within Venice. In its resentful tone, the true motives of the disembodied tour guide become uncertain, drifting from commercial observation of the site to critical dismantling of the universalist values that underpin the structure of the Biennale. In such a tour, the visitor is led astray, not from the site but instead, towards an uncomfortable reality.

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Adam Patterson’s work emerges from imagining strategies of resistance in the face of neo-colonial encounters and desires that affect Barbados and the Caribbean region. Regarding the processes by which ‘paradise’ shapes the Caribbean, the artist is invested in subverting the lens and language of such, in service to the region’s self-image.

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www.adampatterson.co.uk ↗︎

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Geetanjali Sayal /
Juhi Saklani /
Anshul Kapoor

GS/JS/AK

Cross Pollinat/In Venice

This work is a unique pollination of ideas and backgrounds of three Indian individuals living in New Delhi and London, surpassing territorial and linguistic barriers to germinate in Venice.

The spoken word poetry takes you through the journeys and imagination of a wanderer, a process of self-discovery in a backyard lane of an 84-year-old central market in New Delhi, India through the lives of a married woman who keeps visiting her parent’s house during monsoon to endlessly play in the rain in her birth village; a migrant tea seller selling tea from a hidden staircase starting new conversations every day; and a security guard, reminiscing about his childhood days, hiding away from his dad, flying kites with his friends.

The co-relations of the piece to the surroundings in the Piazza San Marco invite you to have your own imaginary perception of the reformation of the Square, through the process of flooding, alteration of edges, boundaries, the fluidic relationship between land and water, human and space which can be ‘scaped’ over again so that the earlier perceptions are less visible physically and mentally.

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Cross Pollinat/In Venice is a collaboration spanning Architecture, Poetry and Sound, between Architects Geetanjali Sayal, with an MA in Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins; Anshul Kapoor, who heads a Sound Design and Film studio in India; and Writer/Photographer/Translator Juhi Saklani, who writes lyrics, screenplays for films and TV serials. Having previously collaborated between India and London, these three use their work to look beyond simply the structural and functional aspects of human, cultural and political dimensions of the environment.

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www.juhisaklani.blogspot.co.uk ↗︎
www.behindwhitestoreys.wordpress.com ↗︎
www.oldstudio.in ↗︎

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Sunil Shah

SS

Market & Nation

Market & Nation are lo-fi sound textures that ironically highlight the two central ideological premises used in the formation and structure of the Venice Biennale: Money and Nation State. In both pieces, text is lifted from Wikipedia, and music from vaporwave - an appropriated, sampled and recycled musical genre. Each piece reflects the artifice of Venice as a spectacular, elite and highly prestigious marketplace placing emphasis and value on commodity and national sovereignty.

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Sunil Shah is an artist and curator. He is interested in the politics of representation and conceptual, post-documentary and archival art practices in relation to history, memory and identity. He is a writer on Photography and Associate Editor of American Suburb X, an online photography and visual culture platform.

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www.sunilshah.info ↗︎

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Michael Taiwo

MT

Home Is A Hard Place To Find

Home Is A Hard Place To Find is a spoken text that creates a dialogue that isn’t specifically set anywhere and borrows descriptions that match a myriad of places that can be read to be familiar and foreign by an audience. There are interchangeable references to gender and race. The perspective of the narration is in constant flux, which displaces who is being referred to and the relevance of the individual to the narrative. In the age of globalization in which international migration is a constant, who are we in relation to others?

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Michael Taiwo is a multi-disciplinary artist who focuses on questioning the role of race in the perception of identity and challenging the conventions of gender roles through spoken word and movement based works. His work fixates on the interplay of these elements to create narratives that capture moments of vulnerability in their rawest form.

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www.oceansgrove.co.uk ↗︎

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Erika Tan

ET

Sonic Soundings ##GlobalFeedback##

Consisting of a series of (hidden) texts and non-diegetic sounds this curatorial intervention, or feedback is located on the physical edges of Venice, where land meets water, and people arrive and depart. The texts restate historical migratory events from the ancient to modern world whilst the sounds of pro-open borders, anti-state and pro-immigration protest amplify the crisis in migratory diasporic and transnational representations.

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Erika Tan is an artist and curator whose practice is primarily research-led. Recent projects have focused on the postcolonial and transnational, working with archival artefacts, exhibition histories, received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movement of ideas, people and objects. She is currently the Stanley Picker Fellow in Fine Art and exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

Sound research support by Sara NG.

Erika Tan & Sara Ng have worked together previously on Tans film ‘Apa Jika, The Mis-Placed Comma’, currently showing as part of ‘The “Forgotten” Weaver’, in The Diaspora Pavilion. Sara Ng is a recent History graduate from Oxford University interested in the intersection between art and politics. She has archived the exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford of artists such as Tracey Emin, Barbara Kruger and Tim Head.

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www.erikatan.net ↗︎

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Tintin Wulia

TW

Untold Movements – Act 2: When I Doubt My Insanity

Untold Movements is a series of sound installations that casts light on the geopolitical border as a space imbued with a secret web of displaced lives. Following on from Untold Movements - Act 1, the original spoken-word poetry, in Act 2: When I Doubt My Insanity grew out of two characters in 1001 Martian Homes, Wulia's solo project at the Indonesian Pavilion this year. Tedjabayu and Hersri Setiawan were amongst the political prisoners of Buru Island, Indonesia, indefinitely detained without trial during the Suharto government. During incarceration, Tedjabayu wrote down any general knowledge he could recall to retain his sanity, and Hersri covertly buried his notebooks under a banana tree as writing was banned. This work, placed in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo – the world's first Jewish ghetto – needs to be activated by at least two people, one staying near the trunk of a tree, and the other(s) walking around it, bringing memories to life.

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Tintin Wulia's practice is informed by critical geopolitics. Trained as a composer (BMus, Berklee 1997), architect (BEng, Parahyangan 1998) and artist (PhD, RMIT 2014), her Creative Australia Fellowship 2014-2016 focuses on things that traverse borders and link humans. Wulia represents Indonesia at the 57th Venice Biennale with an internetworked project.

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www.tintinwulia.com ↗︎

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Abbas Zahedi

AZ

A Bridge That Witnesses Suffering & Yet Continues To Connect

A Bridge That Witnesses Suffering & Yet Continues To Connect follows a group of diasporic/migrant musicians, who have connected at a jam session in London and are trying to create a musical bridge so as to lift the mood of a song. The intimate nature of this process is reflected against a collage of sounds connected to the journeys of these individuals; this forms a dialogue of rhythms becoming a bridge towards something more hopeful.

Musicians featured: Fahad Khalid, Medina Whiteman, Faisal Salah, Rukea Az, Atallah Khan and Ahmad Ikhlas.

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Abbas Zahedi is a multi-disciplinary artist. His practice ranges across photography, installation, performance, moving image, and participatory events, which entwine expressive and socially engaged modes of being. Zahedi is currently exhibiting his latest installation MANNA at the Diaspora Pavilion during the 57th Venice Biennale.

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www.abbzah.com ↗︎
Instagram ↗︎

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