TUNE

Featuring: Lamin Fofana, Nkisi, Kelman Duran, Chuquimamani-Condori (Elysia Crampton Chuquimia) & Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, William Basinski, Abdullah Miniawy, Beatrice Dillon, JJJJJerome Ellis

“Sounds hold enormous amounts of data and the superimposition of different frequencies and waves create the web of energetic fields that connect all of us, animated and inanimate beings. If we are all music, what music do you project? What music do we project collectively?” —Nkisi

Tune will exist in between the world of sound, music, and visual art, forming a consistent presence in Haus der Kunst and an active dialogue with different ongoing exhibitions. It will unfold as a monthly series of short residencies, where an invited artist will present different strands of their work, in different formats and across different spaces in the museum. On some occasions installations and exhibitions will be displayed for a short duration.
The invited artists each through their own distinct practices investigate the ways in which sound flows through, intersects, and alters the realm of the material. Working with histories both communal and personal, real and imagined, they conjure the unknown to challenge the conditions of perception, demonstrating how sound can both orientate and disorientate. Bringing interwoven histories into legibility, they reconstitute a present that is more whole and more vibrant.

Sound powerfully connects us with our memory, but it is also easily denuded of its contexts, allowing it to move freely across and through cultures, constantly being re-coded. When care is given not just to read sound but to be affected by it, to live within it for a time, it reveals itself to us in its fullness. It has an immensely physical character, and simultaneously connects us to the ethereal. The artists in this year’s programme bring forward these possibilities of sound.

Nkisi: |Ngo|
July 7–14, 2021

For the opening of Tune, Nkisi, the alias of Melika Ngombe Kolongo will premiere the AV installation |Ngo| in the West Wing of Haus der Kunst which she will activate with two performances of Replace Truth by Trance. In ancient Kongo traditions, the invisible worlds are the real worlds, the physical worlds only acting as holographic realities of the vibrations emitted. |Ngo| is a vibrational chamber, a place where we connect to the subtle dimensions through vibrational experience. The AV installation functions as a sonic visualization of the Kongolo, the multidimensional cosmic circle, and the Kongo cosmogram. It will be installed until the 14th of July with a newly composed sound piece by Nkisi. This new work is connected to the start of a project Nkisi will launch this year called The Secret Institute through which she and different collaborators will “aim to engage with sound and music from another perspective, not as mere entertainment but rather as reservoirs full of data and as communication devices. Secret studies will focus on investigating the mysteries of sound through ancient traditions and mythologies of cosmic knowledge.”

Lamin Fofana: a call to disorder
July 2021 – March 2022

“My interest here is in collapsing the distinction between reflection and action. The world is falling apart. Who gets to tune in and drop out?” —Lamin Fofana

Alongside the monthly live programme, Haus der Kunst launches a new annual sound commission that will be installed in the Terrace Hall. Lamin Fofana is the first commissioned artist with a call to disorder. Taking inspiration from the seminal text The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, in which “the call is always a call to disorder or wildness, noise, cacophony, the extra-musical...”, Fofana strives to build new structures for feeling and celebrates the noise that has previously been dismissed. He is driven “to create a space for coming together, for collective listening, for dreaming, and for thinking the unthinkable,” however the spaces are not made for harmony or passive listening. Foregrounding nonlinear thinking and experience, the works are in dialogue with ideas around blackness, migration, displacement and race, requiring an ability to feel comfortable with discomfort. At a time of increased scrutiny and reaction against the historical repercussions of institutionalized oppression, the spaces of reflection created by Fofana’s work are as vital as ever.

Throughout the year Fofana will activate the commission with a series of live performances and produce sound pieces for Haus der Kunst’s website and digital content. The presentation of his work will comprise a surprising and new approach, diffusing through the museum’s walls and online presence — with the lingering effect sound has on our memory.

As part of the new radio collaboration between Haus der Kunst and Radio 80000 Lamin Fofana will broadcast live from their studios on Wednesday, July 7 from 12–2pm.

Tune is curated by Sarah Miles.

Public talk
Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 6pm CET
With Lamin Fofana, Nkisi, Sarah Miles and Andrea Lissoni

Replace Truth by Trance
Performance by Nkisi
Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 8pm CET
Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 8:30pm CET

an ode to impurity
Performance by Lamin Fofana
Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 7pm CET