Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hi everyone, and thank you so much for tuning in to this extended conversation. Unpacking the final outcome of my residency with yaya ya nene ne. My name is Kim Karabo Maiken and I'm based in Hawarone, Botswana. We are currently in the Gabs Club members lounge just across from the art residency center archive here in Khaburone, Botswana. And to my right, I'm joined by Anne Gollifa, as well as to my left, hero Makepe. The three of us are going to have an extended conversation about the sound piece, which I've titled Satellite Activism as the final outcome for my radio residency with Yaya Nene Ne.
I've been working with Anne and Pero consistently over the years. We've known each other for much longer, and we've just recently started working quite closely together as a part of the art residency center where we're all board members, executive board members, and so I know them quite closely as friends as well as colleagues and artists practicing locally. But I'll also give you each a second to introduce yourselves and your practice for anyone that isn't familiar with it. So, Anne, would you like to introduce yourself first?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Sure. My name is Anne Gollifer. I'm a visual artist. I've lived and worked in Habaroni since 1985, and I'm a permanent resident. And my practice is a material one, which is based on painting and printmaking, but I also do a lot of writing and reading and photography to go with it.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Thank you, Anne.
I'm Tero.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: I'm also a visual artist and a member of the Botswana Pyrian, which I'm in with Kim. I'm also in a dj duo with Kim as two seater. And yeah, my practice is primarily in photography at the moment, but I also incorporate sound and installation as well, performance at times, and video as well. And yeah, that's me.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: So thank you to the both of you for joining me today for this conversation. It really means a lot to me that the three of us have really started to kind of build and cement a local arts community, and you guys are a part of my community here. So I'm very grateful to be able to discuss what I've been working on with the both of you. I think I have spoken about it with you quite extensively over the last five months or so since starting the residency in June.
And so I'm really excited to share the final outcome with you and really just have a casual conversation about your thoughts, but particularly focusing on a couple of aspects of the piece that I thought would be interesting to discuss with respect to each of our independent practices.
So I'm also excited to hear some of your feedback and any particular points that you would like to discuss. But I think, just to start the conversation, the initial sort of springboard for this project was to consider the archive as living. So this is a concept that I've been working on over the years with particular respect to my master's project, and kind of expanding off of themes from that project, with respect to my research into Medu art ensemble, and particularly looking at Haburonne as a site of international activism. And with this residency, I was interested in expanding that and looking at, sort of comparing and contrasting habroni and Amsterdam as these sites of international activism in some ways entangled with South Africa's history, or particularly the history of medu art ensemble. So, with respect to this notion of the archive as living and thinking through oral tradition, which has a strong presence here in Botswana, as well as ideas surrounding storytelling, that being the reason why I'm so interested in focusing on sound and sound archives, I think, to start off the conversation, Anne, I was quite interested to speak to you about the piece, particularly for your practice as an archivist. And so I was interested in think in talking to you about what you think about this idea of the living archive and how that contrasts to how we archive in the more traditional sense, what relevance it might have or not have within the context of Botswana, and just sort of what your thoughts are on that with respect to your practice.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Okay, well, I think that living archive is essential, and it can't exist if it doesn't reference the past, and it can't exist if it doesn't look forward to the future. In a sense, that's what an archive is. It sounds like something that's static, but it's not. And when you think about sound, it's just, I think the work that you're doing in terms of incorporating sound that's made like music with birdsong and children's laughter, and then also the blanks within your piece, where there's white sound, there's no sound. In some ways, they resonate so deeply because you long for sound. And I'm not sure. You know, the first section where it becomes silent and you just hear a bird song, is that rain or is it white noise?
[00:05:30] Speaker A: So that first part of the sound piece is specifically called out of sight, out of mind. And so it's fieldwork recordings that I took on site. I had identified a particular site with a look at this book publication from the Art Institute of Chicago on Meidou art ensemble and their poster practice. And so I was quite interested to go and take a look at this site, which is just up the road from alliance fonse. And, you know, to my dismay, or perhaps I shouldn't have expected anything, it's. It's been. It used to be the house of, I believe, Theresa Devant and Albio Gonzalez, who were formed a part of me do art ensemble, and they printed that unity is power poster in the backyard of their house, which was there, but now it's been converted into a tutoring.
There's a little playground sort of space. And so I don't quite know what I was expecting to find when I went there or feel, but I was a little bit disappointed to see that the history that I think overlays the land can't really be seen in space.
So I was just interested in recording the space. And I suppose thinking about what I expected and in some ways also thinking about what does it mean to record silence in space?
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what was interesting, because I couldn't decide whether it was raining or wind or white noise. But I just had the most amazing recollection that I think that that site was turned into a nursery school called Hulala. It was the first place of hulala, and that's where I sent Leif, you're older sight, for his first nursery school. And then when you think about that history, the overlaying of that history. So I think that the most important thing, I mean, I think sound, the archive archiving sound and the way that you're doing it is unbelievably essential because it's bringing back memories to us who came just after 1985 in my case. And so we weren't actively part of Mehdu, but it had the.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Presence.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: In the late eighties, there was a very, very strong presence of loss, and that something terrible had happened, but we didn't really know what. And as I'm not Mitswana, but my family had lived here since 76, and I was at university during that period, and I was an anti apartheid activist at university and wrote in the student magazine about it in my absolute ignorance, because I had no knowledge of Africora, southern Africa. And then to come to gabs and have to feel around, and the only thing left was a kind of silence. And one of my favorite lines that you spoke was about that red line of memory and how if you scratch it too much, it disintegrates into like, blood. And it's so true. When you push to try and find something out from the people who remain, they can't tell you. Maybe because of trauma, maybe because they don't care, but mostly because they don't know, and they too, have been silenced. And so I think the work you're doing in terms of memory, it brings back memory. Listening to that piece and listening to the music, it filled me with intense sadness because, oh, I'm gonna cry because I just. That music of Maskela and Wangua, it had a joy that was covering this intense poignance. And it was talking about hope, what had been in terms of hope and what was to come. And I just, we had so much hope at the end of the eighties and the beginning of nineties for the freedom of South Africa. And I was just thinking of how that hope has died because of corruption and deception and greed. And I've lived that history.
And the music really made me go back into my memory of the eighties and the early nineties. And then the living that we've had, and the death of the intensity of art practice, contemporary art practice in Botswana in the intervening years. Then it was resuscitated with Tapong to an extent. And now it's being resuscitated by you, the younger generation who are asking questions that we were unable to answer and that the government and society at large couldn't do anything about. They couldn't put it into the school curriculum. But now it will go in because of your intervention. So. And in terms of my practice, that thin red line of memory is something I want in my work, and I will carry it back to the studio, that line. And I will think about it when I make my work. So, yeah, sorry, I didn't realize I was going to be so emotional.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: No, it actually really means so much to me that the sound and peace could kind of trigger you in that way because, you know how we always say to one another that if it doesn't make you nervous or feel something, then, you know, what are you really doing for? And for me, my work is really about that sort of social impact. So, I mean, I'm sad to see you cry, but I'm actually very honored that, that I've kind of struck a nerve in that way because I'm, I'm trying to do important, well informed work, and, and I hope that you are doing it.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: One last thing. I love this transition from that very nostalgic sound into newer sound making systems that you're involved in with your djing. And like, the new generation of sound that is belongs in Botswana. I think that's a really important shift throughout the. Is it nine minutes throughout the time that you start coming into contemporary and that things are happening. Archive is still being recorded, and music and sound is being seen as memory that can be recorded and saved for the future. And it will continue. We'll have new music in another ten years and you'll be archiving it, which is really cool. So, from tears to smiles, thank you so much, Anne.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's lovely to hear you say that, because I've been thinking a lot through our dj practice as a duo and to what extent music also marks the time. So sort of thinking about music and sound as sort of a historical document in some ways.
And I think it was also important for me to, you know, access this point in history, but then also resounded in the contemporary. So think about how and in what ways it shows up in the present and make that connection across the contemporary moment, and how sort of the life and legacy of medieval art ensemble lives on and perhaps has changed form slightly. So I think that's a good sort of segue for me to ask you, Tero, and sort of unpack this notion that I've been thinking about whilst working on this piece, which is thinking about the DJ as an archivist of sorts. So I'm particularly interested in thinking through specific tools for curating the archive as living. And I think in that way, I borrow a lot from our practice together as a DJ duo. So particularly tools like sampling, like remixing and even like the scratching, or like a glitch.
And so I was wondering what your thoughts are on thinking through the DJ as an archivist and in what ways. Perhaps that aspect of the living archives resonated with you whilst listening to the piece.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, firstly, I just like to say congratulations for putting together so much work. Thank you.
Yeah, this is all really, really impressive because I've been with you in this journey from the beginning, watching it send me being involved, you know, helping each other and stuff like that. So it's really nice to see the progression of where it is right now. But in terms of thinking of the DJ as an archivist, I mean, essentially, if you can, like, visually picture it where, like, a DJ or a hip hop or electronic music producer does it, where they'll go to a record store and pick up a record, a dusty record that may not have been heard a lot by a lot of people, and then they'll take one bit of it, a loop of, like, 5 seconds, and then loop it, loop it and then they'll create a new sound from it and stuff like that. I think that's essentially what you've done with this archive where we didn't know about it. We grew up in Botswana our whole lives, and we didn't know all this information about you, you know, the 1985 raid that happened and the Midwat ensemble and all the amazing things they were doing. And it took us going to Cape Town and learning about it. And then, you know, once we did know about it and we were like, wow, why didn't we know about this? When you ask people who maybe aren't Anne, who aren't as invested in art in an emotional kind of sense, or aren't artists themselves, like, for example, when I talked to my dad about it, he was like, yeah, we used to go for these festivals and concerts used to have. But he would tell it to me in a very, like, you know, it happened in a past kind of thing, you know, and that's essentially what you've done is just like a DJ. You've taken this knowledge that people in older generation knew about and experienced, and you're recontextualizing it for us now so that we can understand why this moment was so important. And also question, like, you know, exactly what happened, what made it so that this history isn't important to us as Botswana, because it does get mentioned, you know, it's on sardhistory.com and, you know, it is in their discourse, but it's not necessarily a part of the Botswana narrative or the Botswana history. And why is that? You know? Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting to just think about, like, the sound as having a familiarity to some extent. So in the same way that, like, Anne resonates with it and remembers a time or has a memory that's associated with it, it would be quite interesting to hear, like, for example, like, what your father might recognize or, like, be familiar with in terms of the sound. And I think that's what makes me interested in sound as. Cause sound can be, like, quite distinctive and can kind of conjure up these memories or place you somewhere. I think I'm interested in the potential for sound to transport you. So with the brief mention of the site at the very beginning that I had fieldwork recordings of, I'm interested in to what extent I can transport people who are in Amsterdam into Haburone and kind of allow them to access the silence that in some ways we experience, although there are so many layers to it at the same time. And I think it's that aspect of layering the history and thinking about space, thinking about time, that I'm also quite interested in.
It's also so great for me to discuss this with the both of you because we are friends first and foremost. But I think we also provide a good example of the sort of intergenerational, conversational, intergenerational passing down of knowledge that I'm also touching on in the work. And it's also nice for you to mention your father, because then there is that also conversation across generations that we're speaking on. And I think for myself, as you mentioned, we didn't know about medu art ensemble growing up here in Habaronne, and it wasn't until we left that we found out about it while studying in Cape Town. And so it's been quite a top priority for me to think about what sort of platforms or spaces we can nurture or create for our kids and the next generation in terms of, you know, providing space where young creatives can be inspired and can see potential in the creative industries, because it wasn't necessarily so clear for us.
And I wouldn't want my child to feel like they have to leave the country in order to have a flourishing arts career, you know?
So I think there's so many things that we can touch on there. I do want to touch on the intergenerational aspect of it a little bit more.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: I want to touch on that quickly as well.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Because when you're talking about, like, for example, like, my father's generation of people who were born in the sixties, I mean, even for me, when I do hear the, you know, the humor, secular records and the. And the Jonas records, I grew up hearing that because of my grandfather and my father, because they love that music. And then also, I mean, these songs used to play on RB one and RB two all the time. And, you know, this is a radio residency. So, I mean, radio is such a huge part of Botswana. It's still probably the most powerful.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: It still is the most popular media.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Locally, for sure, for disseminating news, for listening to music and, you know, so on and so forth. So, you know, for me, it's like, you know, I grew up hearing this music, distant from the time of, like, when it was being made and released in the seventies and eighties.
But it's still like, I have a memory of, like, you know, being a baby, being a child, listening to it on cassette tapes. That's the thing. We were like, you know, I'm not gonna say our ages, but, you know, we're like the last generation where we grew up with analog, we grew up with, like, you know, our parents having vinyls, then a little bit of cassettes. CDs were the main thing we grew up with, and that's no more. But, yeah, we. That's. I guess that's maybe why we still have that sensibility. When you talk about our current generation and then the one that's going forward, I guess we still have a sensibility towards these objects. And that time, because we did grow up with those cassettes and those sounds of that jazz back then still resonates with us still, because we were, like, at the tail end of people still consuming it to a large degree.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: True. Yeah. It's also interesting that you mentioned RB one and RB two. Radio Botswana being local national radio stations.
And I think it was honestly through my experience working on radio that I started to think about to what extent radio can have a distinctive sound. So, for example, Radio Botswana still has the same jingle for news.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: The cowbells. Yeah. Oh, my God, I remember that's the first thing when I came back to live in Botswana permanently in 85. I'd get up early to go to work and I'd put the radio on and, oh, I'd wake up to the sun. Sound of those cowbells. And it's just. I love it. It's so distinctive and it just brings you home, you know?
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was quite interesting for me because growing up, just on the short ride from home to school, my parents would quite often play the radio in the car. And it's sort of the contrast between my parents. My dad would generally play, like, a south african radio station. So SAFM and then my mom would play, like, radio Botswana. And so I think maybe that's where I got that sensibility to the specific sounds. Or perhaps it's also radio etiquette. There's other sort of cultural nuances to it. But it's interesting to think about, I guess, how the station brands itself and the sort of ideas that you can just softly absorb through listening.
And I think that also speaks to just the potential for sound to.
It's interesting for me because you don't have to give radio your full attention. It's not like it's something you sit and watch and it's eyes and ears and, you know, it's just kind of sometimes something just playing in the background and you don't necessarily realize how much of an imprint this leaves on you, how you recognize the sound. Like years later, I think I want to touch on this notion of passing down knowledge intergenerationally a little bit more.
And I suppose I have this key phrase written here, which is word of mouth. And I think quite often, through the activities that we've been putting together with the art residency center, with the Botswana Pavilion, we rely on sharing the news through word of mouth, telling someone who tells someone, and then they tell someone else. And this concept is of word of mouth or passing down knowledge in this way. It's been quite interesting to me, because, in a way, that's how much. How I've learned so much about medio art ensemble through conversations with you and meeting different people. And I think that, for me, has been most valuable than necessarily a material archive, although I'm still dying to get my hands on some more mehdi posters.
So I suppose I'd be interested to know from the both of you what you think in terms of, I guess, the potential to capture a moment and sort of document it through sound. And I don't know to what extent this could be something that could form a part of the distinctive local sound.
A silly thought that I've had is maybe kind of imagining this sound piece or a similar sound piece to play on radio.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: I've thought that, too, and I've thought about it in.
Maybe you have to reform it into a slightly. Well, a different thing. But I really loved the mixture of the sound, the music, and the voices. And I almost felt that it was almost like a call to activism from you to the current community, the elders and the intergener, the newer generation, say, where did that passion go? Where did that call for creativity, for change? Because then it was opening the doors of culture, using culture as a weapon to destroy the apartheid regime. And there was such passion and purity and energy and strength that went into that call. And you. You've caught that. And I was thinking this could be called to a call to a new activism for creatives, for building a new creative community in Botswana that then feeds into the general community in terms of, yeah, trying to make the world better. I know it sounds really cheesy, but, you know, that way of mixing sound. And if it could be played on radio Botswana or on the radio as a piece, as an artistic piece, like a piece of music or, you know, rap is words, it's the whole open mic thing. If you could combine that kind of message, and I don't want it to be like a message that you're dictating to people, but that you can create this idea in people, that they have a chance to stand up and make a difference to the way that we live and the way that we conduct our business towards providing a better world for more people.
I want you to be an activist, and I think you have the tools.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Make it into. I was thinking Kim should make this into a creative piece, a piece that can be played, you know, on one of your djing sessions or released on the radio as an artwork, as a piece of music that people buy and listen to and that inspires them to.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Be cool.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: In a good way.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, with a social impact. Thank you.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: I'm gonna think about that a little bit more, because initially the idea was to sort of, when I started these sound pieces, to think about how I can install sound in space and how it can be some sort of intervention. So I've been thinking about particular sites that are associated with Mehdu's history that we pass by on a daily basis and have no idea of what sort of history overlays the land. And the initial thought was, if I were, if these walls could talk, what would they say? Or just kind of, you know, how you mentioned that radio has, you know, it's an educational tool. It's also a tool for entertainment. So to what extent could, if the sound were to be installed in space, the ordinary passerby would suddenly be able to engage the history of that space and become more informed on what the space is actually about and what the sort of story it would tell.
So I guess that's where I'm interested in the overlay between my practice in sculpture and then my practice in sound and sound installation, because I'm thinking about sound as very much contextualized.
Yeah. So it's interesting to hear you say that. I don't know. Thero, do you have anything to add?
[00:27:12] Speaker C: You could also put them on USB.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Sticks and let them travel in that way.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Going back to, like, modern music and remixing and djing.
There's a producer and dj called Bawa, and he once released his music instead of putting it online, and this was like, just as, like we were starting to go into the streaming era and leaving, like, just buying music on iTunes. He gave out his music to everybody, like, through USB's at his shows. So I think, I mean, that's kind of like, you know, you have to have a budget to do that, but that's, I mean, going back to, like, you know, preserving the objectivity of things and this thing feeling like it's sacred, because once again, it is like, you know, this knowledge that we know of people, our age, but like, not everybody knows it yet. Yeah, we've tried to like, you know, get that knowledge out there, but, you know, there's still some work to do. And again, how do you convey to somebody that this is important? Yeah, what's interesting is it is like, again, like Ann kind of outlined is that like there was this moment in the seventies and the eighties where the globe was uniting to liberate South Africa as one. And obviously, you know, the big narrative was free Nelson Mandela. There was like songs. Free Nelson Mandela.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: And, you know, of course there were south african exiles in the US and things like that that were making these songs and that helped galvanize people globally that this is wrong and that led to the sanctions. So it showed that, you know, art actually does have an impact on policy and politics and so on and so forth. And then the liberation happened, politically at least. And then there was the late nineties going to the two thousands, early two thousand, ten s. And, you know, everything that Ann outlined about the corruption, the deceit happened. And now our generation, people who are in their late teens, twenties, thirties are now looking back at that time like, hey, what happened? And critiquing it, like, not everything because there was like a deification that happened of all these liberation leaders and people who did fight, but, you know, what did they do with it afterwards? So it's also about being critical of it. And, you know, obviously the technology of the time. Now we're living in a time where, you know, you're doing a radio residency that's like, you know, the organization is based in Amsterdam and you live in Botswana, which is so interesting that like something like that is able to happen. It wouldn't have been able to happen 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: So now we are in a new moment where people are being unified in a different way. And your sound piece shows that, like, now the african diaspora, like, if we think of Africa as a whole and its diaspora now all these different sounds of the Afrobeats and the amapiano, which you included, are all starting to come together and converge now. And, you know, obviously we're still figuring it out because some people have ownership that like Afrobeats is nigerian and amapiano is from South Africa and this sound is from this sound there's a belonging. But, you know, it's so easy to do stuff now. So everybody's making the same kind of music and converging and, and things like that. So it's interesting, like we're in these two different. Your work kind of like, outlines these two different moments of time where it was the seventies and eighties and the agenda was liberating South Africa, females in Mandela. And now it's sort of like, I guess, just liberating ourselves, because globally, everybody's realizing whether whatever the movement is, whether it's a feismos for, it's a black lives matter, we're dealing with these oppressive systems that, you know, have existed for a long time, and there's been moments of, like, you know, the civil rights movement or liberating the whole of Africa. And now we're getting back to a time where it's time, should we address these structures that were, you know, they were questioned back then and there was some changes that happened, but they're still. It's still not enough such that, you know, everybody feels free and liberated, but, you know, art and music is a powerful tool for, I guess, a marker in time that, like, this is where we are in time right now. And, you know, like I'm saying, all these different things are happening where, you know, people are converging throughout the african diaspora. So I think your work is. Is important in that way. It brings together two generations and two moments in time.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: It's great that you mentioned sort of like, the theme of exile, and that's something I would also like to discuss with you guys.
Something that has really informed my interest in Mehdu and the archive that exists or doesn't exist is what I've termed the dislocation of Mehdu art ensemble. So in some ways, I'm quite concerned with relocating Mehdu's memory within the context of Bodwana because I feel that whilst it happened here, it's not necessarily so accessible. To this day, not a lot of people know about it, like young people.
And so it was interesting for me to think about this concept of exile, because towards the beginning of the sound piece, I recite a poem that's actually by one of the founding fathers about exile. And I think I say a line where I say something along the lines of, to what extent is this history as its founders in exile? It's been quite an interesting thing for me to think about because, you know, I couldn't study fine art here in Botswana, and so I left Botswana to study fine art. So in some ways, I've been thinking about this moment as, like, you know, the dislocation of me or, like, putting myself in exile to some extent. But obviously, it's a bit more glamorous because I just left, like, I wasn't like under any threat or something, you know? But, but it's been interesting for me to sort of think loosely about this concept of exile and to what extent it has informed, I don't know, my interest and intrigue in this moment, this feeling of moving away from home and learning about home. It's a little bit ironic, but in my own experience, I found it to be, I don't know, very rewarding and fulfilling at the same time because it's, I think it's, it's given me this perspective that is, you know, home, but also like kind of looking at home from the outside inwards. So it's like, kind of like I've been given this perspective to be able to look within and outside inward.
And. And so I just suppose I wondered what your thoughts are on this, on this concept of exile. I feel like we spoke about it briefly yesterday, Anne, about being in between two places. Kind of in between two places.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: I think most people nowadays have kind of that feeling. You move from the village to the city and you could also flip the idea of exile backwards in terms of the fact that there are people who are exiled from further education by not being able to go outside. And my thing always would be, you need to leave home for tertiary, in a sense, even if it's from Machudi to Haberoni, to get perspective on home. And it would be really cool if the government could have a more broad help for more students to have the choice to leave Botswana or stay.
But I think that that position of being exiled, in whatever sense you use it, is essential for an art practice. I kind of have that feeling, maybe because that's where I'm coming from with mine. I live in a country where I don't have any indigenous belonging, but it's my home. I don't really know. I don't live in. You know, when I go to the UK, I'm a visitor. I have a british passport, but I'm not completely the same as everyone else. And then in Guyana, I feel most at home because of the smell and the family, but it's also somewhere that I don't really belong. And so negotiating all those spaces makes me question a lot of things, in a sense, the way Shepherd Nduzo is zimbabwean, but he lives, is a permanent resident in Botswana. And he's always questioning those things, too. A sense of belonging. Fact head.
When she was in Sorori, I'm not sure. Yeah, she wrote, there's a whole series of notes and letters entitled the sense of belonging. And she investigated that idea of a sense of belonging over and over and over in her work, in her writing, and in her short stories and her novels, searching for her and that sense of belonging and the idea of, is there a home? Is there anything to go back to? For my mom, for instance, she can't go back to Guyana and find the home that she left 60 years ago because it doesn't exist anymore. So where is that? And I think having this feeling of being dislocated or exiled from a memory or a physical space is a very creative ground. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: I don't know if you would feel the same or if you felt the same, Terrell. But while studying in Cape Town, I quite often struggled with, like, using the word home. So if I was going back to, you know, the resident hostel that I was staying in, the student hostel, I would say, oh, I'm going home. But then I'll be like, oh, it's not really home, you know, because my idea of home is kind of tied to here, my parents house, you know? And so I've been thinking a lot about, like, this concept of home, I guess, dislocation. And to what extent is home tied to a specific space or place or people? And then to what extent do we carry home with us on the daily?
It's interesting that you mention sort of, like, Afrobeats and maybe the home of Afrobeats being in Nigeria, but more specifically, like, the home of Afrobeats of Amapiano being in South Africa. Because, of course, there's been this movement, amapiano to the world. Right. BBC has just recently done a documentary on the Amapiano movement, and we're seeing south african DJ's performing in the Netherlands, in England, in America, headlining.
I think there was a whole amapiano stage at Coachella recently. So it's interesting to think about, I don't know, like, home perhaps, as origin, but then how, like, new homes are kind of formed from that, or how home can travel across borders.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Yes, it can.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Yeah. What do you think about that?
[00:38:13] Speaker C: I think globally, black people, people of color, were all in a moment of reconvergence and reconnecting. I think that's probably happened in the last 5568 years, maybe decade, whereby, you know, even if you look at, like, in film, for example, Black Panther, when you look back at, like, I mean, Black Panther came out, what was it, 2018 now? So it's been like five years, three years. And, like, the second one is coming out now. But, like, that was a moment where, for the first time I saw African Americans, like, really reclaiming and taking the agency that, like, I'm african and we're gonna wear our traditional garb, even though some of them aren't even able to track. You know, not everybody can afford to do a DNA test where they can see where they come from in the diaspora. Yeah, but that was a moment where it was like, you know, african people, wherever they live, coming in unison to celebrate their africanness. And I think it's just a huge swell of a moment that's happening in music, in film, in photography, even. And, you know, your work is like an extension of that.
But going back to what, you know, Anne was saying about, you know, the opportunity and the need to go and, you know, as you come of age, go and study outside of the country, I think I needed that, too, because even looking at it now and, you know, how I'm talking about, you know, how I learned about this history, and then I felt it was important. I think maybe because I did learn about it outside, that does, you know, activate the importance for me, because what happened was when you leave home and you go to somewhere like Cape Town, for example, where I think I didn't have a real sense of pride, of being a Botswana necessarily. I think I'm very much like a millennial global kid where I was dreaming of, like, leaving the country all the time and stuff like that. But then when you go to South Africa, you encounter a lot of people, especially during the time when fees must fall, where people are really proud of where they're from and the africanness. Like, I'm saying, it's like this moment that we've been in where people are really reclaiming their history and where they're from.
And I had to, like, I felt for the first time that, like, standing up for Botswana, that, like, you know, and then when I learned that history, I was like, wow. So this is something that I can hang on to because as somebody who always had a desire to be a visual artist, I didn't have anybody to look, look back to that. Like, you know, these were the important people who, you know, were making culture outside of the, you know, indigenous culture that we know, but, like, were actually making art and inserting themselves in discourse.
So, you know, learning about it is like, I felt proud and there was a sense of, like, standing up for Botswana. Like, you know, this. Everybody needs to know about this now.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: And, yeah, I forgot there was a point that I wanted to touch on, but I'm kind of, like, forgetting right now.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe I'll come back.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: Let's circle back to it. Yeah, I just wanted to mention about that because initially it was a little bit daunting for me, like, going to South Africa, because the education system is very contextualized within the context of South Africa. Everything tends to relate back to South Africa's history, which obviously I didn't learn throughout school, having grown up in Botswana. And it was just something I started to think about a lot because I come from a background of, like, international schools. And so being introduced to an education system that's very contextualized in a way was very interesting for me because I was like, actually, we kind of need something like this. Well, in fact, I think we need a balance between sort of international perspective and a local contextualized perspective.
And that was something that I appreciated and I think I learned through my time in South Africa. But as well as, like you say, having been present for several student protests, that I think really activated our need to kind of question our identity, where we're from, where we're going, and what that means in the political landscape of South Africa.
As we start to wrap up, can.
[00:42:18] Speaker C: I remember the point that I had was on this, like, you know, conversation of home and, you know, ownership of history or, you know, a certain type of culture, whether it's like, you know, the music that is being made right now, and some people feel like, nah, Afrobeat is purely nigerian. I'm a piano is purely south African.
I mean, we all have different perspectives here, you know, in terms of and where you feel like this is home. Even though I don't have, like an ancestral, like, kind of like belonging to this place, but it's home for me, you know, and your children have also grown up here now and then. Kim, similarly for you, your mixed background where your mother's a Matsuana and your father's british South African.
And then with me, like, you know, I'm a fourth generation motwana, I guess I could say my great grandfather was the first person to come here on my father's side from Lesotho, and he was a police officer. And then from there, like, now I've claimed, or like, the family's traditional, but Lokwa. Yeah, belong to the Lokwang tribe.
But, like, that's the thing, you know what I mean? Like, I can trace it. That's not too far back, you know, that's really like the 1920s, thirties, forties.
So do I even own Botswana as well? I guess I kind of do in a way, but, like, that's were all products of globalization in a way.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: In a way.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: Because, like I said, just the nature of how I grew up with Internet and digital satellite tv, the way I speak isn't. Some people find my accent of it weird.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: Phones, you got a little twang. Exactly.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: But look, I mean.
[00:44:04] Speaker C: Exactly. But that's just naturally, that's the evolution of culture, society and civilization.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Can. I was just going to say globalization is not new. Yeah, I mean, you know, like plants and animals, the human, the hominid started.
Homo sapiens started in, we think right now the current view is in southern Africa on the west coast.
And we walked. So we've always been moving into each other's territory. We walked all the way to Australia. We got onto those beautiful South Pacific islands. We walked across to South America, to North America and South America. I mean, we've walked and we've. People have always, always mixed, always mixed and moved. And so, really, to try and purify, it becomes fascist in the end. I am very, very proud to be able to claim my mom's tribes, Warau and Arawak, because that's honest and it's true. But it does give me a really amazing sense of belonging just in those names, actually. And I'm very proud of my dad's heritage. He's a wonderful Essex man. Anglo, Anglo, European, Irish, Welsh. Probably pretty indigenous as well, if you want to be indigenous in the UK. Celtic, you know, I think that's important.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: Because, you know, knowing it. Yeah, we all, as far back as we can go to know it, but, you know, unfortunately, for different reasons of oppression and, you know, dislocation, some people just won't be able to, you know, know their history. But, like I was saying, when there was that moment of, like, black Panther and Wakanda, for example, it's just so nice when, you know, people are able to converge and not judge each other or have any envy that, like, you know, ah, you know. Yeah, that you're Igbo or you're so too, or whatever. And I'm an African American, African American from Detroit, for example. But, like, there's no envy on the one side that I wish I had that, and there's no looking down upon. You know, there was this thing when I was growing up that we used to look at, you know, people from the diaspora that, like, they don't have any culture, but then at the same time, we still appropriate them. Like I'm saying, like, you know, we listen to hip hop and all these kinds of things, their own culture that they created for themselves in the absence of, you know, losing a past one.
So I think it's important that, you know, we don't judge each other.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: But you can hear that in the.
[00:46:33] Speaker C: Music that's enjoy each other's different, you know, cultural sensibilities.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Yeah, you can hear that in jazz. It comes. It came from Africa and it went to the States, then it came back to South Africa with that beautiful, those beautiful, that tradition. But over the top of it, there's that fantastic american beat as well in Hugh Masakella is playing and Jonas Mgwanga and Steve Dyer.
So music doesn't care. It does not care. It doesn't have to care. It just flows like water to the sea. It takes, it picks up, it drops off and it just evolves and it's current 1 minute, and it's not so current another. But it holds memory always. For me, music is like a river.
It just. It gets fat, it gets thin. It goes into the sea, it goes back up in fear, it falls again. It's just cycle for sure.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: That's why I love sound so much, because it's not restricted by national borders in the same way that we are as people. So I love the way that you spoke about jazz music as, you know, kind of. Of having a place in South Africa, in America, and specifically with Hugh Maskella. I mean, he was in exile in America and is south african, of course. Why South African? And so it's interesting to think about how the jazz music that he made also in some ways is reflective of, I guess, his exile and interaction with cultural.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: It is the symbol of old school AnC.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: It's the sound of freedom. Amazingly.
[00:48:05] Speaker C: I have a question for you quickly, before we wrap up.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Okay, there is one other thing I want to touch on afterwards as well.
[00:48:13] Speaker C: How do you want to archive, you know, this material that you've made? Because, like I was saying, like, we grew up in the, you know, the era of analog cassette tapes. Books were physical books that you had to pick up. Now you can, you know, just get ebooks and, you know, we get readings and like, PDF's and things like that.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:37] Speaker C: So, I mean, there's a few different things that have happened with your work. Obviously, you had to do your master's dissertation.
You've done sound pieces. You've worked now on video as well. There's a performance and sculptural aspect to your work. So where do you see it existing in the long term so that, you know, it is accessible?
[00:48:59] Speaker A: That's a great question. Terror.
I don't even know where to begin?
I mean, right now?
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Vinyl. Vinyl maybe.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: I don't even have a vinyl play at this stage.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Everything, you must put it.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Everything. Yeah, I mean, I still have this dream of sort of installing the sound in space and having it as like a site specific intervention.
But yeah, at the moment, I've been using Soundcloud a lot. I think because of my background as a dj. Soundcloud is a great community of DJ's producers, and I'm just really interesting at what's happening over there. Even just the way the algorithms are set up and the way that I kind of go down a rabbit hole finding remixes and flips of music that is familiar to me, but has a new sound to it. Like, I've been listening to a lot of amapiano remixes of old school r and b songs, and that's really like, what for me, Soundcloud is like the home of. And so with my earlier sound piece on Hauron in 1985, which was my first broadcast with Yaya Ya and Nne Na, I did put it up on Soundcloud because I think I wanted to sort of access this, like, DJ community, producer community, and have that as the sort of perspective within which to engage the archive as a layering.
I think I would like to see it on radio or hear the sound on radio, like you mentioned, Anne, because I think radio as a platform provides just an interesting space to sort of infiltrate people's homes without being physically there, but also to generate a conversation. So I sort of imagine it playing at a particular time of day, and then perhaps having a conversation on air about it thereafter.
But then it will also just be interesting to engage the listeners and see what sort of response they have to the different sounds, to what extent it's familiar and resonates with them in a particular way, or doesn't.
I think I'm also interested because I'm coming from an art background. Quite often in art literature, they speak about the viewer and how the viewer interacts with the work. So I'm interested in kind of flipping that notion of the viewer to the listener, and how we can relate the experience of the viewer in a gallery space to the experience of a radio listener to some extent. But yeah, with this project, satellite activism, it's the first time I'm playing around with actual video or making the video. I've always worked with videos, but I've always extracted the sounds and just focused on that. And it's interesting to hear you say thero, that we are sort of of the generation that kind of outgrew the analog system and went into digital because I was quite persistent on just focusing on the sound element because I'm so interested in the sort of cultural value of radio in Botswana. And so that's why I've been most focused on the sound element. But you know, as I come to terms with the fact that most homes no longer have the radio as the centerpiece piece of their living room, these days it's a television.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Ah, be careful.
[00:52:12] Speaker A: You think so?
[00:52:13] Speaker B: I think that most Botswana still listen to the radio regularly.
[00:52:16] Speaker A: No, definitely.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Ordinary people just, I mean they love rural areas both. But I think radio still has the edge and that sense for local. For local consumption.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: What people listen to every day, all day, engage with. It's all the different radio stations, either the government ones or the private ones.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:37] Speaker B: Still very, very, very potent communication.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. I'm glad to hear you say that because in some ways, you know, I'm also constantly thinking about how I can make art accessible to the average mutana radio. And that's why radio is it for me. Because I think it's easy to even just be doing household chores and listening to the radio in the background. But without realizing it, you are engaging, let's say, my artwork or a specific moment in history. And I think that's an access point through radio, perhaps through reading material as well, to some extent, as opposed to like going to a gallery.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: And I think the music and the sound on radio is going to be your biggest dissemination. And then if people are interested, they can go read. Yeah, but I also am really interested in a development into music video.
[00:53:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:30] Speaker B: I mean, I see a political activist album from Kim making my head too.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: And then.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, like Kate Tempest. Yeah, she's, you know who she is. She's a british rapper and she's so angry. And you know, it's great. A lot of the music that I, that you guys tell me to listen to and I listen to it, the sound is great, but the message is, oh, I fell in love with him. It's usually quite like. But we would. It's not that edgy. The sound is edgy, but the actual content isn't edgy. Some of the american guy that did wrote brilliant. I don't just can't remember his name. He made a video and he was singing in the underground thing about killing everybody.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:18] Speaker B: I love him.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: This is America.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: Yeah, this is America. It's just that takes. That's where you're going, I think, with sound and image. And then one other thing I wanted to say about Tara's question about where are you going to lodge this work so that it is there for posterity. Have you thought about accessing international music banks or sound banks libraries where you. Yeah, sound libraries where you lodge your work so that people can find you there and they can do it digitally, can do it from anywhere in the world. True. So I think that's really important when you make a piece that you feel, okay, this is. This is my message for this moment, and it cannot be better or worse. It's what it is. Sound bank it and do it in on many sound banks, and I think you can access that easily.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: Okay, great.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: What was your last.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: My last little brain wave was just sort of coming off of the conversation on jazz and its cultural value across the Americas and in South Africa or specifically in North America or the states.
And because in the sound piece towards the end, there's a relationship that I make between Earl Sweatshirt, a young rapper, and his father, who was associated with Mehdu art ensemble, and kind of looking into that relationship specifically through El Sweatshot's music.
It was just another way that I was thinking about this relationship across USA and South Africa, because Kiropeti Kotila, I believe, went to America and in exile. In exile. And that's where he met Earl Switchard's mother, Cheryl Harris. And.
[00:56:14] Speaker C: He went back home.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Yeah, and then he went back home. And Earl Switchworth grew up without his father.
But the specific sounds that I reference in the sound piece in the last bit about intergenerational. It's called intergenerationally.
It's two songs. It's one song called Riot by Earl Swetcher, which. Which samples a song by Humasakela called Riot. And then there's a second song called playing possums, which features both his mom, Cheryl Harris, and his father, Kirupeta Kozile, reciting a poem.
So I guess I was just thinking about, in some ways, how Earl Sweatshirt's music practice kind of speaks to this notion of dislocation or exile in a contemporary way, because he references his father, his parents, that moment in history, and kind of recontextualizes it within his own creative methods. I feel like you're kind of a big Earl Sweatshirt fan, aren't you, Terro? What are your thoughts on that?
[00:57:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I've been a fan of his since almost the very beginning.
I came to him when his very first musical project just called Earl. It was a mixtape came out, and it was clear. I mean, he was in the odd future music collective and it was clear that, you know, he had a really, really talented pen when it came to writing music.
He was so descriptive and so vivid. But also, I mean, he was making. He referenced that absence of a father a lot. And he was making this music that was very much about the angst of not having a father. And, I mean, that comes up a lot in hip hop, you know, and, you know, for different social, economic, and historical reasons. A lot of black men in America grew up with the absence of a father, but his was from a different perspective, where it wasn't maybe a father who was, you know, in jail or passed away from whatever case may be that can, you know, obviously, black people get in danger in America, but a father who left him this talent, it was clear that his talent came from his father. Like, he has a line in his second project, his album, where he was like, the pressure is building on me because Papa was a poet, right? So he knows that he comes from this history of a father who is an amazing poet, but he's never interacted with him. And again, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about not deifying liberation leaders because they weren't perfect. They were humans just like everybody else. And we don't know the details of why his father wasn't involved or involved in raising Earl, but he had this real angst about, like, not having a father. And that was something that was, you know, really prominent in his music and resonated with a lot of his listeners. And then, obviously, his father passed away. I think it was 2015 or 2016. And during that grief, that's when he started reconnecting with his distant family that is in South Africa. And, you know, he came to South Africa, and that's when he started, like, sampling who's actually his godfather as well.
But, I mean, that's such an interesting situation there because, like, you know, he's critically engaged with the memory or non memory of his father and that historical time, because, like I said, like, these are very interesting moments because he. His father was obviously a part of these liberation movements. Earl Sweatshirt has been involved to some degree, I think, with the recent black lives matter protests and things like that. So time is almost in a constant loop, and these things always come back around. And, you know, his name is Tebe. The parents didn't give him americanish type of english name. His name is Tebe Kosizile, so he can never escape his africanness and where he, you know, where his. His father came from. And now he's starting to engage it in a more critical way without the angst that was there from before, which is really interesting for me.
[01:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm interested in this idea of history as circular and cyclical in some ways. So it means so much to me to be able to have this discussion with the both of you. As much as we're referencing this moment in history, I think we're actively thinking through our collective practice today in what ways we can kind of put these thoughts and ideas at play or in motion as we imagine the future of the arts locally.
I just wanted to reference the line that you briefly mentioned earlier and from the poem that Manganiwale Sorote wrote called exile. It's memory is a thin, red hot membrane on the brain. It vibrates all the time, makes sounds, when makes sounds, rings and chimes, and it goes on like that. So I'm just interested in this idea of memory, and I hope that the sound piece can have a lasting memory for our practice going forth, but also for anyone who's listening and engaging with the subject matter. I'll just take this time out to thank you both for joining me for this conversation. It's been very fruitful and I think we can continue the conversation in our own private time. I want to also just say thank you to yaya ya nene ne for this radio residency, my very first residency, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I just want to thank them for their mentorship, feedback and guidance, as well as their support in helping me put together this piece. And I think it'll definitely be something that I continue to work, rework, or it'll influence my ideas going forward for sure. I also wanna give a shout out and thank you to black hippie entertainment on the sound and production for today and this conversation. Thank you both. Thank you to the art residency center, to the Gabs Club, and I think, without further ado, thank you for listening. Thank you for getting this far.
All right, it's a wrap. It's a wrap.
