Pentagram – DNA, 2014

Installation view Pentagram (2014) at ESAV Marrakech, official parallel project of the 5th Marrakech Biennale

Installation view Pentagram (2014) at ESAV Marrakech, official parallel project of the 5th Marrakech Biennale

In 2009, under the pseudonym of de Pawlowsky, artist Paolo Bottarelli worked on a performance piece entitled Pentagram, a DNA string engraved on a Plexiglas plate to be arranged into music, an open score hung on a wall to be played by a musician but also by means of the mental involvement of the viewer.

Pentagram (DNA), 2009, engraved plexiglass

Gaston de Pawlowsky (1874-1933) was a French writer, author of ‘Voyage au Pays de la Quatrième Dimension’, a science fiction novel that – as Jean Clair stressed – probably influenced Marcel Duchamp and his artistic research to a high degree, especially for his Large Glass. “What we were interested in at the time was the fourth dimension!”, Duchamp kept saying.

For years, Paolo Bottarelli has been been picking up on these intuitive reflections across art and science from the beginning of the 20^th century in order to question them extensively from the perspective of the current timeframe.
 As a talented chess player, the artist approaches his work as an ongoing game, addressing his rational and intuitive perception of the unutterable secrets of nature and science.

From quantum entanglement to Wigner’s ‘friend experiment’, from wave function collapse to inter-subjectivity and consciousness studies, the artist continuously picks up on correlations that exist within the physical universe that poetry is so beautifully able to express and that both the scientific and artistic imagination grapples with.
 With ‘King of Blue’ Bottarelli produces a stream of consciousness, and – following a path of personal associations – his Pentagram winds up being played with a self made balafon/xylophone built on the basis of a bed mesh.

Detail of Pentagram (2014) at ESAV Marrakech, official parallel project of the 5th Marrakech Biennale

Paolo Bottarelli (1975, Italy) is an artist who lives and works in Berlin. In 2010 he embarked on a life-long project entitled ‘ChessCube Project/Mind Rooms’. He recently participated in ‘Imagine Being Here Now, Momentum’, the 6th Nordic Biennial
 of Contemporary Art; NoN [ ], SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, ‘KOD EPOI’ (Zeitgeist), Moscow; ‘Entering the Mind’s’, Beijing, ‘Mind the Brain!’, Pisa; ‘How To..’, parallel event of the 11th International Istanbul Biennial. Among his most recent solo projects: ‘Hypnerotomachia Universalis’, Stattbad Wedding Berlin, ‘Autopoiesi: A game of chess against oneself’, Italian Embassy in Berlin, performance in the framework of ‘Berlin Art Forum’, ‘Mind ≠ Brain’ (about Kurt Gödel), ‘91mQ’, Berlin; ‘Epifanie Matemat- iche, Oratorium Passionis’, Basilica Sant’Ambrogio, Milano.

piano préparé, 2014

piano préparé, “If your are so smart, why you ain’t rich?”, Official Parallel Project of the Marrakech Biennale 2014

piano préparé, 2014, “If your are so smart, why you ain’t rich?”, Official Parallel Project of the Marrakech Biennale 2014

detail

Tal Isaac Hadad presents ‘piano préparé’ (prepared piano), an installation piece, which aims to associate two distinct fields: boxing and piano playing. The sculpture reflects upon the kinesthetic experience formulated by Kurtág’s ‘Játékok’, the body as a form of intelligence, incorporating the body through music, and music through the body. Here, the sculpture positions the body in a different role in order to generate and express ideas about music. The piano is constrained with the attribute of the heavy bag used for boxing practice. The piece takes the contemporary musical tradition of the prepared piano to another era.

Tal Isaac Hadad is a French artist. He lives and works in Paris. Tal Isaac Hadad affectionately reformulates and adapts sounds, in popular as well as more skillful emanations. His approach, which often involves an observation of the music scene or the way in which sound circulates in public spaces, could be likened to that of an ethnomusicologist.

The artist fuels his research through fieldwork. Unlike most researchers he infiltrates a social group in order to invite its members to participate in the project. He participated among other things in the 2010 Venice Biennial of Architecture; Get it Louder 2012, Beijing; FIAC 2012 at Grand-Palais, Paris and Istanbul Biennale 2013.

Melos Amoris (2009-2010)

Melos Amoris, installation view at ESAV, Marrakech Biennale 2014

The fact that whales sing is widely known at the latest since the success of whale biologist Roger Payne’s LP Songs of the Humpback Whales, issued in 1970, which was euphorically received by the New Age movement. The songs of the mouse, however, are by far less famous. During her research, Evgenija Wassilew came across recordings of ultrasonic songs produced by mice for conspecific communication and courtship. Employing ethological methods, the artist attempted a translation of a wholly new sort: she converted a whale song to match the auditory range of a mouse and recorded the latter’s ultrasonic reactions during a defined period. A scientific method with which researchers usually study communication among individuals of one species was thus transferred to a utopian, romantic-absurd dimension.

Shifted back into the human range of hearing, the response of the mouse becomes audible, similar to longing piping sounds, interacting with the playback of the whale. Simultaneously, spectrograms noted this unusual acoustical encounter. Printed on paper, they visualize the song interactions through different lines and graphs, and can be read along with the sounds like a score.

The title of the work is not only reminiscent of the mysterious quality of Latin taxonomic names, but also refers to medieval mystical songs. Melos means « song » in Latin, or « song line » in the sense of readable written music.

Lee Chichester/ Evgenija Wassilew

Evgenija Wassilew postgraduated in 2008 from the DAAD University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany, after finishing her Master at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2006 and was a guest student for 6 months at the UST, College of Art in Kumasi, Ghana. She had exhibitions in the US, Germany, France, Greece, Ghana, Benin, Bosnia- Herzegovina and Belgium.

and who sees the mystery, 2014

Following the repatriation in 2010 of the Paul Bowles Collection of Moroccan traditional music from Washington to Tangier, Zouheir Atbane and Gilles Aubry started a collaborative artistic research focused on the reception of these recordings in today’s Morocco, in relation to contemporary discourse about cultural preservation.

The first outcome of this project is the sound installation “and who sees the mystery” following their residency in Tafraout, a village where Paul Bowles recorded an ‘Ahwach’ music performance in 1959.
 In collaboration with local musicians and other inhabitants, the artists deliver an interpretation of the return of these music recordings to their original location, including the documentation of listening sessions, discussions and musical practice. The work deals with the politics of invisibility by establishing correspondences between Paul Bowles as an ‘invisible spectator’, the veil as a strategy of resistance against colonialism by the women of the Addal music ensemble and the Pythagorean curtain of French acousmatic music.

A few pictures of the installation “and who sees the mystery” by Aubry & Atbane at the “Why ain’t you rich if you’re so smart” group show at Marrakech Biennale 2014, ESAV Marrakech

Gilles Aubry is a Swiss sound artist who has lived in Berlin since 2002. Initially trained as a musician and composer, he graduated in 2010 as a Master student in Sound Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin. His artistic practice is based on an auditory approach of reality informed by research on cultural and historical aspects of sound production and reception. In 2011, Aubry was a guest artist of the Global Prayers research project. His works and performances have been presented internationally, including at the FICA Foundation, New Delhi (2013), House of Electronic Arts, Basel (2013), Camera Austria, Graz (2012), Swiss Art Awards, Basel (2012), NGBK Gallery, Berlin (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), Bat Yam Museum, Tel- Aviv (2010), Tuned Cities, Berlin (2010) and MACBA, Barcelona (2010).

Zouheir Atbane, born in 1983 in Casablanca, is a contemporary dancer and sound artist. Starting with the study of Gnawa music, Zouheir‘s art practice has developed through numerous collaborations with the Casablanca-based dance company 2k_far and other artists. He now works as a freelance sound artist.

Crackling Data Machine, 2014

“We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment. I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.” 

Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.

Crackling Data Machine, installation view at ESAV Marrakech, Official Parallel Project Marrakech Biennale 2014

Due to the concepts of networks, we are also in an epoch of total surveillance, information overflow and hyped up economic betting. We want to confront this reality with our absurd DIY experiments and artistic hacking. We are searching for the net’s potential of creating its particular imagery and sounds, reusing its questionable techniques.
Sound has been crucial for the Internet ever since. Data was actually transferred via sound signals back in the era of modems. And still, data are waves, surrounding us as electromagnetic fields or are rhythmically transmitted as light sequences. We sonify the invisible melodies and rhythms of data and hence make it perceivable.
To achieve this, we created a machine, which is driven by data. It executes three different tasks: Firstly, it is harvesting data from the public as well as the surrounding wireless networks. Secondly, it visualizes the data by printing it and transfers it to sound by different means of sonification. The sound is reproduced on the metallic structure of the installation. Thirdly, it has a specific shape and acoustics, which interacts with its surrounding space and the public. Its production is orchestrated an restaged in the exhibition.
- Ali Tnani and Lukas Truniger

Video documentation of the installation at ESAV Marrakech, Official Parallel Project of Marrakech Biennale 5

Lukas Truniger is a Swiss sound artist, musician and composer. Born in Zürich in 1986, he obtained a music degree from the Robert Schumann School of Music and Media in Düsseldorf (D) and is currently undergoing his postgraduate studies at Le Fresnoy – studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing (F). He works in the areas of live music, performance, multimedia installations and the creation of new instruments. Fascinated by network processes and concepts of multidimensionalism, self-made code and circuits, hacked instruments and misused tools; these components have become crucial to his work.

His installations have been shown in Germany and Tunisia. He participated in various musical projects in an experimental, improvised but also club-orientated framework  performing as an electronic musician and bass player in England, France and Germany. He received residencies at the Cité International des Arts in Paris (2011/2012, F) and the Kolleg für Musik und Kunst in Montepulciano (2011, I) as well as a project scholarship from ON – Netzwerk Neue Musik in Cologne (2013, D).

Ali Tnani (1982, Tunisia). Lives and works in Tunis, Paris and Brussels. He is a multimedia artist. Photography, drawing and installation are the most used mediums in his works. He is interested in matters such as memory, utopia and error. He graduated from Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis and he took part in digital arts workshops.

He received residencies in Cité Internationale des arts in Paris (F), Transcultures (BE) and in Villa Sebastian (TN). A.T. exhibited his works in solo shows in Tunis, 2013, Paris, 2012 and belonged to group shows at the National Museum of Carthage (2012, TU) as well as festivals such as City sonic in the Museum of fine arts in Mons (2010, BE). In 2013, he obtained the Visual Arts Grant from Arab Fund for Arts and Culture AFAC (LB). An overview of his installation work is published in Musiques & Cultures Digitales (MCD) #71, Digitale Afrique, Paris, 2013.

Caroussa Sonore, 2014

Carroussa Sonore – Rabat from Younes Baba-Ali on Vimeo.

Project of broadcasting sound art in public space
Sound installation
Rabat – 2012

Originally, the “caroussa” was an object with a specific function: for sale, spread cd’s broadcasting Koranic verses in the streets of religion. We are dealing with a kind of religious marketing, stems from the intuition that the sound both oral and musical is an interactive material which determines the physical space. In front to it, we do not have eyes, but ears widely open to information, sometimes missing critical distance. Carroussa Sonore is a curatorial and artistic project of Younes Baba Ali, this intuition becomes awareness.

Made out of a cart created out of salvaged material, equipped with a battery for powering an audio player, an amplifier and speakers as a module the “carroussa” keeps its original appearance and function of sound broadcasting in the public space, but presents a panorama of contemporary sound design selected according to context (from spoken word to soundscape, from experimental music to radio art) and implicitly becomes a way of raising the awareness of listening. In a society characterized by a visual saturation Carroussa Sonore offers a different time, a moving and ephemeral aesthetic experience. At each step, it draws through the sound a new cartography of the city lasting the time of listening.

Artists :
Zouheir Atbane, Gaël Segalen, Blenno die wurstbrucke, Raphaël Charpentié, Younes Atbane, Simohammed Fettaka, Anna Raimondo, Giancarlo Norese, Younes Baba-Ali, Youssef Ouchra, Kyop Jeong, Simohammed Laouli, Rohan Graeffly, Angus Carlyle, Stefano Giannotti.

Televendita
HD video 16/9
Lenght : 29’25”
Courtesy of the artist and FAMA Gallery (It)

Televendita from Younes Baba-Ali on Vimeo.

Televendita is a collaboration with Alessandro Orlando, the most popular Italian TV art salesmen. The video consists of a TV sale of a selection of Baba-Ali’s works, asking for the direct participation of the viewer, invited to call to the show to buy them. Using the typical language of TV market shows, this project proposes an ironic view on the complex relation between art and market.

Younes Baba Ali (1986, Oujda) lives and works in Brussels & Casablanca. After graduating from the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg in 2008 and from the Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-provence in 2011, he has participated in several international exhibitions and biennials such as the Biennale of Marrakech ‘AIM’; the Biennale Skopje BJCEM; Sketch Gallery, London; “FIAV 09”, Catania; “Brick & Mortar International Video Art Festival”, Greenfield; Espacio Menos Uno, Madrid; Loop Video Art Festival, Barcelona; Interference, Breda; CEAAC, Stras- bourg, In-Sonora Sound Art Festival, Madrid and La Galerie du Syndicat Potentiel, Strasbourg.

In Duk Hee Jordans Stone Series she explores and criticizes the theme of guilt and memory. Guilt, whether lived or imagined, relates both to culture and memory. One of her most recent stone installation pieces has its roots in Kandahar. The stones, originally from the US military KAF (Kandahar Air Field) in Afghanistan, that she has used stand as witnesses of the current conflict in Afghanistan. KAF is not Afghanistan; it is considered American land, site of the final major battle of the Taliban. The stones bear witness to the preceding and ongoing conflict. They tell of the atrocities of war and carrying the stains of battle. The stones tell one of countless stories that took place in the past, transporting them to the present-day viewer. Independent of local situations, the work brings to mind associations of mortality and destruction.

Stones from Kandahar (Taliban last Stand) – Installation view at ESAV, Official Parallel Project Marrakech Biennale 5

The stone remains represent something that once was and is now irrevocably lost. The mechanical action in the piece reinforces those associations: the stones are chaffed together in a mechanical and asymmetric choreography, producing dust and sound. This dust becomes a bridge to perception, and symbolic of a lengthy process.

Obsidian from anne duk hee jordan on Vimeo.

Obsidian
, 2014

Obsidian (2014), Installation view at ESAV, Official Parallel Project Marrakech Biennale 5

The newly produced piece of Anne Duk Hee Jordan shows an obsidian, a volcanic rock characterized by its intense and glassy black color. In 
a slow and automatized choreography, a translucent quartz crystal is grated onto the obsidian surface. Over the course of a hundred years the quartz stone will polish the obsidian into a mirror. The lascivious movement of the two contrasted stones portrays a mute poetry.

Once again, the obsidian’s origin reveals a broader meaning within a precise context. Anne Duk Hee Jordan picked up the stone alongside the mountains of Iceland after the infamous Eyjafjoll volcano eruption in 2010. This disaster, immobilizing global air traffic, was felt in all layers of society, from the economic to the social. The unexpected disruption compounded the global economical crisis auguring the collapse of Island’s and other banks, a particularly devastating event for the island and the rest of Europe. Over time however what happened are bygone days, and what remains are memories and broken fragments of obsidian.

With her performance “Atlas” Duk Hee Jordan expands further on the symbolical meanings intrinsic to stones, their geographical origins and diffused myths. The ruins of several ancient civilizations – from Stonehenge, the Easter Islands to the pyramids – show that they used massive stones to construct their monuments. One might wonder why use stone pieces of such colossal size and weight when the same structures could have been constructed effortlessly with smaller blocks? The answer in all probability is that they wanted to realize a simultaneously everlasting and momentous memorial. It is recorded knowledge that these ancients had a method of lifting and moving these massive stones that made the task as easy and manageable as lifting a two-pound brick. Some researchers hypothesize that the ancients may have mastered the art of levitation, through sonics or some other obscure method that allowed them to defy and manipulate gravity.

Performance ATLAS (2014)

In her telling action orientated narrative, a massive stone (1,5m x 1,5m) from the Atlas Mountains is pulled up with a crane up right till about 20 meter hight. Then it is dropped from approximately 17 meters high, where due to gravity, it falls down and smashes on the ground in a hole.

„Thus I try to create a synthesis with my performance between old mythologies portrayed in a modern technical form – the crane as the form and the stones as historical mythologies of cultural memory. The stones originating from the Atlas Mountains mirror a dual symbolism. On the one hand the Atlas is the first vertebra of the neck, which carries the head and is a component of the neck, forming thus one of the most crucial elements of our supporting apparatus. A neck break is often fatal and can result in total paralysis of the upper and lower limbs as well impairing vital organ functionality. If one were to approach the “neck break” of cultural memory figuratively as embodied in the stone here, it is impossible to transform learning from past experiences for acts into the future. If one extinguishes past experiences by erasing all memory of them, then no reflection or transformative change, both in the present or future can take place. Thus the historical path would be interrupted and thousands of years of accumulated wealth laced with cultural experience irrevocably lost. The ominous threat of a cultural neck break is delicately balanced against another historical myth, as the stones are aptly named after the Greek Titan Atlas. Atlas participated in the revolt of the Titans against Zeus and was defeated. As punishment, he was destined to undertake the cumbersome task of supporting the sky, carrying the immense weight of the world on his shoulders. So, too does cultural memory have the cumbersome task of absorbing and echoing the historical development of our cultural history not only to itself, but also to future civilizations looking to the past for the truth. Arguably the future of civilization, depends on our consciousness of cultural properties as a wealth of experience with which to forge new paths into the future.”

This performance took place Saturday 1st of March 2014, 16h  – location 15km outside of Marrakech, at route de l’Ourika, in collaboration with les Laboratoires OUF, organized by Akram Haissoufi

Anne Duk Hee Jordan was born in Korea and lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Academy of Arts, Berlin Weissensee, and obtained a Master of Fine Arts at the Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin under Olafur Eliasson. She has had solo exhibitions in Taiwan, Japan, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin, including “Metrotopie” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, as well as part of group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Modern Art (Tokyo), the Goethe Institute (Sao Paolo), and the Reykjavik Art Museum.

Hobo College for Itinerant Studies (Confessions of an overworked artist), 2014

The project takes the themes of migration, labor, creativity, exhaustion and travel, examining and amplifying them through the figure of the Hobo: the migrant worker who trailed across America in the early part of the 20th century, hopping on trains, sleeping outside of towns in search of work. The Hobo is a complex embodiment of the modern laborer subject to the pressures of capital. As Nels Anderson stated in his study from the 1920s, to deal with the Hobo “society must deal also with the economic forces which have formed his behavior.” Yet, Hobo culture was also a thriving wellspring of anarchist thought, social organization, and political protest, leading to expressions that sought to negotiate the demands of work with the spirit of the road – the Hobo is a figure in search not simply of work, but of a mode of freedom.

Hobo College for Itinerant Studies (Confessions of an overworked artist), 2014, ESAV Marrakech

The project follows the Hobo as a historical figure but also as his current emanation, drawing a line from these early traveling workers to the contemporary ‘precariat’ – as a figure defined by the new spirit of capitalism. Inspired by the establishment of what was known as the Hobo College (Chicago, 1908), the installation appears as a makeshift camp: a series of improvised tent structures located in the center courtyard of the ESAV school. Integrated within the scene is an audio work capturing a dialogue between three hobos as they debate the relation between labor and leisure, work and freedom. The work is envisioned as an uncertain college dedicated to itinerant studies as well as itinerant knowledge. Here, the Hobo is a vehicle for imagining routes into and around cognitive capital, where stupidity and the unskilled, daydreams and fantasies of Big Rock Candy Mountain may capture a type of unease central to the precarious body.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and cultural theorist. His works explore questions of social life using sound, performance, text and in situ constructions. This results in situational and contextual projects in public spaces, acts of (mis)translation and archiving, as well as micro-narratives of the (un)common.

His work has been presented at General Public, Berlin (2013), Whitney Museum, NY (2012), Image Music Text, London (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), A/V Festi- val, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Instal 10, Glasgow (2010), Museums Quartier/Tonspur, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegro (2009), Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (2009), Tuned City, Berlin (2008), Casa Vecina, Mexico City (2008), Fear of the Known, Cape Town (2008), Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2003, 2007), Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba, Brazil (2003, 2006, 2009), Sin- guhr Gallery, Berlin (2004), and ICC, Tokyo (2000).

As a prolific writer he has authored the ‘Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian’ (Errant Bod- ies, 2012) ‘Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life’ (Continuum, 2010) and ‘Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art’ (Continuum, 2006).

Memories are Made of Chance and Mistakes

Archaeology of a journey in Morocco, 2014

“The first time I went to Morocco, I took the world’s slowest ferry in Algeciras and arrived very late in Tanger. Two gentlemen, Mohammed and Mustafa, offered to be my city guide. I accepted, that moment was the beginning of the nightmare.” Marco Montiel-Soto

“This will be all right, I said. But as soon as I took the needle out of the vein, I knew it wasn’t all right. I felt a soft blow in the heart. Pat’s face began to get black around the edges, the blackness spreading to cover his face. I could feel my eyes roll back in their sockets.” William S. Burroughs – Junky

“They made me walk in the darkness, very deep in the Medina to an empty hotel and offered me all kind of strange business. Something weird was in the tea, images, dreams and lost memories, I remember feeling perplexed as to why both flies are trying to steal my passport, I can not remember so clearly but I found the way to escape to another city, then somebody followed me for a week. After that first impression of Morocco, I came back four more times.” Marco Montiel-Soto
.

For this exhibition project Marco Montiel Soto creates an installation including a map of Morocco with postcards, photographs, bus tickets, stones, money, (animal?) species, amulets, paper, flutes, drums, notes and sand from the desert. The viewer becomes an explorer accompanying the artist on his journey. The map is an open archaeological guidebook to his five sojourns in Morocco. The map dovetails with sound, found objects, Morocco’s musical instruments, photography and videos. The videos were recorded on the road, on the beach, in the desert, in cities, the Rif and Atlas Mountains, the Drâa valley, Erg Chebbi, oases with snakes, monkeys, camels and donkeys. A narrator tells the story of this journey to, from, and about different cities, languages, memories, conversations, prayers, storytellers, field recordings, drums and flutes.

Alongside these memories, the visitor experiences a diffuse and dissected voyage as metaphor of the continuous personal-social movement, paranoia, and the intersection of real and imagined memories.

Installation view “Memories are Made of Chances and Mistakes” (2014)

Memories are made of chance and mistakes //// Marco Montiel-Soto //// 5th Marrakech Biennale 2014 from Marco Montiel-Soto on Vimeo.

Marco Montiel-Soto (1976, Maracaibo, Venezuela) studied Photography and did
a master in Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin. After extensive travels across Europe, he settled in Berlin. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in South America, the United States and Europe such as Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, 2013; Galería D21, Santiago de Chile, 2013; Ars Electronica, Linz, 2012; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Maracaibo, 2012; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, 2011; Hamish Morrison Galerie, Berlin, 2011; Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, 2011; Kommunale Galerie, Berlín, 2010; Espacio Al Borde, Maracaibo, 2010; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2009; CCCB, Barcelona, 2009; LACE Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, 2008. He does not follow a straight line, but uses photography as a paper copy of an idea, writes symphonies using slides, and videos, and he constructs installations with found objects.

Oshodi Stock Exchange, 2014

Oshodi Stock Exchange

This piece combines sounds, experimental music and an index of objects sold by Lagos street hawkers. The installation explores the informal economy in Lagos as a parallel economic sphere governed by its own internal dynamics and system, often referred to as System D. In summary, its best practice includes the all-important street smart that is required to navigate and survive the rough terrain, critical service delivery that involves locating customers, dodging state officials whose sphere of influence overlaps with the informal sector, coexisting and competing with rivals, balancing profits and losses, and the die-hard spirit of the hustler. Emeka is concerned with a subsection of the informal economy operated by itinerant hawkers and street vendors scattered all over the streets and major bus parks of Lagos.

The sound aspect of the installation will focus on the unique voices and sounds made and utilized by these hawkers to attract customers. The sounds and voices identify themselves as well as their wares. These sounds have been recorded and are used 
to create a musical composition in collaboration with the Berlin based composer Kristian Kowatsch that is minimal and organic at the same time.

Oshodi Stock Exchange_1_excerpt_11kHZ8bit

The composition is an extension of the Lagos soundscapes work, and in line with the compositions of Julius Eastman. According to Eastman, each new section of a work contains all the information from previous sections, though sometimes “the information has been taken out at a gradual and logical rate.”

An LED display shows the Lagos Street hawking sales index contrived from fictional and non-fictional companies. The idea is to create a utopian representation of the informal sector by displaying them on the stock exchange index.

Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian artist, whose work deals with broad notions of listening and focused on hearing. He works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces, each endowed with a unique character. It is his goal to employ field recordings to explore the history and aural infrastructure of cities, in particular the city where he lives : Lagos, Nigeria. The corpus of works produced from these sound recordings has led to the Lagos soundscapes project, which documents the mega city through sound.

Emeka is a DAAD 2014 grant recipient, and has exhibited in Nigeria, and internationally, at venues including, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos; Menil Collection, Houston; MassMOCA, Massachusetts; Shin Minatomura, Yokoha- ma; Museum of Contemporary Arts Kiasma, Helsinki; Rauternstrauch-Joset-Museum, Cologne; and at the International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO) Madrid. Emeka is co-founder of the Video Art Network Lagos, and a member of the African Centre for Cities project on African Urbanism. He is also an affiliate member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and was part of the Media Lab in the Africa delegation to the 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEARHUR 2010 (Dortmund, 2010).