With works by Denise Onen, NKOSENATHI ERNIE KOELA, Robert Machiri

and Muhammad Dawjee, Garth Erasmus, Zara Julius, Nkosenathi Ernie Koela, Christina Kubisch, Mpho Molikeng, Gabi Motuba, Neo Muyanga, Denise Onen, Kirsten Reese

Opening: April 26, 7 pm

Critical listening is the first step toward an ethics and aesthetics of care and freedom. Discarding listening habits and accepting new sound qualities allows access to other layers of history and experience. Artists from South Africa and Germany share their listening experiences in new sound works. They reveal fractures in post-apartheid society in South Africa, offer forms of transformation and healing, and question the ownership of sound in a postcolonial transhemispheric frame of reference. Their collaboration aims to counteract stereotypical views on and about Africa that define the continent as a place of exploitation and extractivism.

In a two-year process, the project partners Akademie der Künste, Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and Deutschlandfunk Kultur have created a space for exchange, residencies, collaboration and the creation of new works for the exhibition and the radio. Through an open call for proposals in South Africa, seven artists were selected to make up the project’s artistic team along with three so-called Catalytic Artists. Residencies in Berlin, sponsored by the DAAD Arts & Media program, and in Cape Town, allowed for the development of research, sound recordings, and project-specific technologies for the new sound works.

The exhibition at the Akademie der Künste now brings together the newly created sound works. Parallel to this, the research led to radio productions that will be broadcast on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. The opening evening will feature a DJ set by Robert Machiri (Fellow Music & Sound 2021).

Oscillations is a project of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town) and Deutschlandfunk Kultur / Klangkunst (Berlin).

Sponsored by the TURN2 fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

Supported by the DAAD Arts & Media program, Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf and National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS)

Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin

Picture credit: Denise Onen, “Understanding” (photo: Lili Bo Ming)