Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below Nkisi performance
project
Description
Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below was a group exhibition curated by Panos Giannikopoulos, held at the Old Oil Mill Factory from 18 Novemeber 2023 to 11 February 2024, featuring the participation of acclaimed artists from Greece and abroad and showcasing a series of new productions.
Mystery 151 A Rave Down Below explored the political dynamics of the body in motion from a simultaneously geological and cultural underground point. Alchemical wanderings from the historical past towards mythology and a post-industrial present culminated in a delirious dance. Inebriation, intoxication, revulsion, euphoria, release, vent, and ascent; a circular path from the body to the ground and back again. The exhibition’s narrative unfolded through the myths and history of the city of Elefsina and its Mysteries, with dance serving as a means of climax, a sacred ritual and a method for exploring concepts of death and loss.
The opening of the exhibition featured a series of performances, among them that presented by Nkisi. Nkisi Ngombe Kolongo, known by her alias Nkisi (spirits or spirited objects in the Congo Basin), explores the sensorial side of human experience through sonic resonances between
traditional rhythms, hard European dance tropes, and synthesiser melodies. Her intricate sonic worlds channel Congolese cosmology through a dazzling array of contemporary club styles like gqom, juke, grime, and techno.
Considering rhythm, echo, and melody as a vehicle for information exchange, Ngombe Kolongo used sound as a tool for exploring ways of thinking, mainly driven by African Cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo, as well as Noise Tantra and its reverberations. She is specifically focused on the idea “that hearing is seeing, seeing is reacting/feeling; whether audible or visual, all communication is to emit and to receive waves, transmitting and exchanging information through voice and voiceless forces.” Through Ngombe Kolongo’s sonic practice, this cosmological concept was considered in conjunction with Édouard Glissant’s idea of an échos-monde, exploring the recurrence of rhythms in the patterns and systems of a world in which everything is resonating with each other.
Archival Research
Artists
Stages of Implementation
Opening and performance: 18-11-2023 Time: 20:00
Tickets Policy
Free admission.
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