Ncoko: Conversation as Art

South Africa >> Namibia

This collective, led by Dumama, Kechou and Mushroom Hour is interested in extra-disciplinary learning informed by post-colonial lived praxis. The project aims to explore a collective archive as artists and cultural practitioners, looking to excavate and document memory, meaning and knowledge production using audio-visual creations.

The project will challenge existing modes of knowledge production by creating improvised audio-visual experiences ( short films, documentary, e-motion pictures), in an attempt to bridge the gap between shared knowledge and spirituality. Andrew Curnow explains: “Our focus, during a time in which technological revolutions are changing and challenging the ways we learn and communicate, is to create an audio-visual representation, capturing a dialogue with cultural practitioners that’s more focused on process rather than product, where the art (film and music) that emerges becomes the conversation/research.”

Between 1-10 August 2019, the collective will travel to Windhoek, Gobabis, Spitzkoppe and Swakopmund with 4 filmmakers, along with musicians and Namibian-based visual and performance artists on a collective conversation around memory, preservation and holding the intangible.

The project will look at the following lore themes:

• • Relationship between knowledge, spirituality and capitalism  
  • Individualism, collectivity and intergenerational exchange 
  • The role of music as a tool for psycho-spiritual transformation and healing 
  • The future of Southern African folk musics/first cultures 

This research project is designed for new knowledge production through a dialogic exchange through practice for performance and recording material for all practitioners involved. Rather than taking a hypothesis of proposed findings, the work takes a generative and reflexive approach in the analysis of research data acquired from the collective’s experience, musical expressions and filmed  conversations. There is a hoped outcome that this project will further contribute to the realisation of future collaborations between SADC countries.

The cultural practitioners involved are:

• Dumama (Gugulethu Duma) – music
• Kechou (Kerim Becker) – Music
• Andrew Curnow – Mushroom Hour Co-Founder and Project Producer
• Nhlanhla Masondo – co-founder of Mushroom Hour and Filmmaker
• Naledi Chai – Filmmaker/visual artist
• Ayanda Duma – Filmmaker
• Chris Kets – filmmaker
• Mel Mwevi – Namibian tour manager, musician, poet and performing artist
• Isabel Tueumuna Katjavivi – visual/performance artist
• Namibian San Council and the Ana Dhej San Trust