HD Video, 6 channel audio, 20 mins, 2024
Sound Design, Mix and Mastering by Richy Carey
No archive can restore this chorus of (diasporic) shame questions and imagines, in lieu, what the old, and now abandonded Nigerian Film Unit could be filled with. The sonic memorial Igwe creates is dedicated to the persistent, pernicious entwinement of Nigeria and Great Britain and the diasporic condition it creates. Reworking a personal archive of sounds collected over five years (Jos, Ibadan, Lagos, Badagry, Ndiejezie, Arochukwu, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and London); taking inspiration from the utopian inaugural address of Nnamdi Azikiwe as well as the history of protest, conflict and rebellion in Nigeria from colonial times to present day independence; and experimenting with the sonic registers of a variety of collective singing practices, Igwe produces a cacophonous chorus of sound that offers a redress from the dominance of Western imaging of Nigeria and a conjuring up a personal imagining for a different gaze on the history and future of the nation.
Onyeka worked with composer Auclaire and to create a song cycle for 12 singers that reimagine protest songs from the Egba Market Women’s Revolt. Onyeka then came to the studio where we together to create a surround sound work that mimics the form of sacred harp singers, weaving the choral songs amongst sounds and stories from Onyeka’s personal research archive.
Commissioned by the Museum of West African Art and Arcadia Missa on the occasion of the Nigerian National Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2024.