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Temporary Stored
Not only masks and sculptures were stolen from Africa during the colonial period. Sounds also did not find their way into European museums without
being forced. Joseph Kamaru explores the audio archive of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.
Temporary Stored]
Radiophonic
2021/2022
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An ongoing extraction of cultural property has occurred in colonies outside Europe leading to the objectification of artifacts, humans, tools, sounds, instruments amongst other materials. This harboring of the objects in museums and institutions is unethical an problematic as the so-called objects’ are not regarded as objects in an African context. These are historical carriers, spiritual beings, and cultural entities that have been passed
over generations and are meant to be learned from and act as reflections of past and future histories. Although these histories are not accessible to whom they belong to and impetus imagined histories of the past. The occident has accumulated most of these archives and continuously reproduces a
colonial pattern in this discourse. Considering suppositions proposed by Bonaventur Ndikung, and Kofi Agawu on the archive, [Temporary Stored] questions and reflects on the significance of these sounds, objects, and instruments stored in ethnological museums. These museums and institutions have acquired objects through dubiousconditions such as looting, theft, greed, and naivety of sellers, in the spirit of predator capitalism outside former colonies of Europe, eradicating histories, norms, and practices of these communities and countries. Additionally, with the fact that most of the archives
have been contextualized from a European bias and an institutional ordering of knowledge, the presentation, descriptions of the sounds and objects often lose the relationship with their/ its inhabitants as the focus has been put primarily on the ‘object and ‘sound’ materialities leaving other significances of the archives. Temporary Stored] focuses on a narrative throughout different sounds from the Sound Archive of Royal Museum of Central Africa repatriated in 2021 and reconfigured in an emancipatory sonic hearing of the archive through a radiophonic sounds piece.
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KMRU: IMPERCEPTIBLE , PERCEPTIBLE
For this streamed commission, KMRU presents imperceptible , perceptible. Constructing remembered sonic thoughts of decayed time, the piece explores lived experiences of sound, gradually returning us, we, them to the present or past. Exploring field recordings, noise and drone, imperceptible , perceptible probes to impetus the knowing. Subtle durational changes of sounds, and moving images create phantasms as reflection of the present.
Thu 18 Nov, 2021, 8pm
Streaming on this webpage and Vimeo
waste(s)
KMRU
Waste is fundamentally crucial to environmental discourse both in physical and digital domains. It contains the value, usage, and temporality of things, although many are unaware of how much these phygital wastes contribute to the climate catastrophe. Just from our daily lives, we are in situations that contribute to carbon emissions generated through our devices and internet use. In contrast, other parts of the world, such as Nairobi, the subject of KMRU’s piece, are battling with tactile wastes, surrounded by landfills affecting communities and the life of humans and other species. waste(s) (2021, 15:48 min) seeks to reflect on the concept of pollution. It asks: How is waste created? What happens when waste is thought of in different ways, and can waste be a source? To create the piece, KMRU collaged field recordings of waste(d) spaces, electromagnetic sounds of social media sites, and the digital debris of trashed and recycled audio fragments into new compositions. A juxtaposition between the digital-physical concept of waste, waste(s) is recontextualized as an artistic resource for real and imagined pollutions.
Sound: KMRU
Video: Kevin Karanja
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Resonant Links
Within the complex sound specter of our environments and surroundings,
sounds are always immersive, proximal, and constantly pushing through our bodies.
There is a temporal flux with the sounds of our habitus and daily lives, which most
often goes unnoticed and ignored. 'Resonant Links' investigates this aural-dual infrastructure
of the urban and sea life, accentuating these two world's auditory perspectives
and dimensions and poses an impetus on our relationship with the sonic habitus.
don’t linger, they might see you
Untraining the ear Listening Station
13.12.2020, 16:00
With/ KMRU
ON 88.4 FM in Berlin and 90.7 FM in Potsdam at reboot.fm, as well as online here on our website, and via our facebook page
don’t linger, they might see you explores sounds, field recordings, silences and noises giving sense of occurrences, and continuous experiences of time. "They", here, is a metaphor of nothingness connected with our continual stream of thoughts and consciousness, unlimited to any specific time and space, this can be in real life, dreams or in “other worlds". The piece explores sounds which are unseen (electromagnetic), which are always in around us and mostly unnoticed. Although they are somewhat silenced; these sounds have a connection/ interaction with the environment, just like our bodies.
Premiere: Aho Ssan & KMRU – Ruined Abstractions
London’s Hot Desk collective remerge for the latest instalment in their charitable Work From Home series. Live sets made up entirely of original material, where Herron, Gamba and Ausschuss propped up the second edition, the third assembles another cast of talent right from electronic music’s bleeding edge.
Sitting alongside solo outings courtesy of Myriam Bleau and Zoë McPherson, Nairobi’s KMRU and Parisian producer Aho Ssan occupy the third and final slot. A cosmic collision of lacerating sound design and conscious-expanding synth, it conjures up images of potentially habitable exoplanets.
All proceeds from the music and painting are donated to Hackney Migrant Centre, a local organisation that provides support to asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in London by offering advice on immigration, welfare, housing and health.
Compilations
Remixes