Black Sonic: Heritage as Heresy
FADA Gallery, The University of Johannesburg, South Africa
July 14th-September 30th, 2022
Digital Experience & Online Content: www.theimaginednew.org
As the second volume of The Imagined New, Black Sonic: Heritage as Heresy first emerged as a four-part digital programme of original content, uploaded to The Imagined New website for uninhibited, public engagement. The digital programme responds to a central inquiry of the broader, long-term project: If the fantasy of ‘civilisation’ is sustained by imagining and reimagining relationships with the environment, memory and a set of inherent rules which imbricate whiteness with the sacred, then how does the profane (read Blackness) undertake this task of historical (re)imagination? How do those that face down the catastrophe of history rebuild in its aftermath(s)?
Central to this rebuilding is a certain conception of Heritage and Heresy. Here, heritage is not intended as a kind of singular cultural, national or continental identity but as praxis or rather, a set of praxes that operate both in relation to and against the logo-centrism of ‘civilisation.’ As an expression, Blackness challenges the stability of the sacred-profane dialectic. In so doing, heresy reveals the paradox of the orthodox and enacts the possibility of choice
The programme’s four online installments, or sets, (Black Phonic Substance, Radical Imagination of the Ordinary, Erased Bodies which Speak, and Perceptive Knowledges) explore sound and sonics not as content, category, or the cultural ‘by-product’ of the Black experience, but as a heritage of heretical praxis; as so many ways of being and becoming.
Referring to a systemic mainstream culture of marginalising Blackness, Black Sonic asks:
If the project of history is one of silence, of the systematic erasure and disappearance of those considered peripheral to the optic fantasy and logo-centrism of ‘civilization’ (read whiteness), then how might the sonic present a uniquely enabling modality for thinking, feeling and performing a different historical imagination?
In line with the mission of the digital programme, Black Sonic: Heritage as Heresy is reimagined in new form as an immersive exhibition at FADA Gallery. This multimedia offering includes film and sound installations, print media, photography, and classical African art; all tracing the various ways in which Black knowledge evolves across history and location through sonic production and expression.
The exhibition is an audio-visual experience that transports audiences through various Black soundings from across the African diaspora.
Physical Exhibition Curators: Melaine Ferdinand-King & Machel Bogues
Digital Experience Curators & Designers: Melaine Ferdinand-King, Machel Bogues, Lois Anguria, Will Johnson, Kundai Moyo
Featured Artists: DJ Lynnée Denise, Michael McMillan, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Ihab Balla, Rhea Storr, Geri Augusto, Jessica Care Moore, Jonzi D, Axelle ‘Ebony’ Munezero, Bolegue Manuela, Nafisah Baba, Will Johnson, Melaine Ferdinand-King, Mzanzi Youth Choir, Tshepang Ramoba of BLK JKS.
