How Far 

How Far
Multichannel Sound Installation
With support from Pro Helvetia (Swiss Arts Council) Johannesburg, I traveled to Kinshasa and Brazzaville to record sounds of both urban areas, with a particular focus on areas adjacent to the river. News reports in 2019 stated that funds had been secured to construct a bridge connecting the two cities, placing them, and the areas around the river in particular, in a state of suspended transition.
The result was an immersive sound installation that investigates the auditory world of the Congo River as experienced using binaural in-ear microphones at various points along the river banks in and around Kinshasa and Brazzaville. These field recordings act both as documents of time and space, and as raw material in which other kinds of information can be found. The recorded rhythms, textures, turbulence and macro- and micro-movements undergo a process of analysis, deconstruction and reconstruction in order to shift away from a realistic representation and towards a speculative fictional world of new characters, dimensions and spatial relationships.
A version of the installation was presented in 2021 at the Bordeaux Submarine Base in an exhibition titled Rhizomes, curated by Paula Nascimento, and another version, which introduced a video component, showed in 2022 at an exhibition/event titled Influenzart, curated by Nelisiwe Xaba in Johannesburg.
This video is an excerpt of the full 30 minute piece.