Dreamlands SS22 Publication

Introduction

Dreamlands SS22 Introduction
Collective Dreaming and Emergent Futures
Mina Heydari-Waite
Dreaming entered my practice at a point when I felt that much
of my work was replicating the structures of rationality I
was trying to imagine alternatives to. I felt that the modes of
observation and sequencing I was using in my research were
breaking down the potential of the ideas and affects I was
interested in; categorising them like dried specimens ready
to be filed away. I wanted to develop techniques, symbols
and environments that kept those ideas ‘alive’ in a way that
retained a more multivalent sense of possibility. I became
interested in material expressions of dreams, hallucinations
and revelations - drawing on radical histories as resources
that are less dependent on hegemonic rationalities. In
contrast to dominant Western cultures, where the influence
of psychoanalysis has meant that dreams are often regarded
as reflective of an individual’s inner life, many cultures
incorporate dreams in the fabric of their material realities. I
am interested in how dreams can link our individual sense of
self and wider collective meanings in ways that might evade
or resist some of the oppressive structures of our waking
lives. How might the potency of our individual dreams
manifest if we treat them as contributions to a collective
imagining of the world?
As an artist, I’m interested in using strategies of association
to weave together dreamscapes that hold figures, images,
objects, dialogues, and events that question what it might
mean to dream together. Key to this is an exploration of
‘social dreaming’: a reflexive practice in which people
share their dreams and associated thoughts in a group,
layering a collaborative collage of images, ideas, memories
and feelings. This process seeks to put our ‘rationally’
defined realities in conversation with our wider, associative,
dreaming minds, offering potential for new perspectives to
arise. The aim of social dreaming is not to interpret a dream
for an individual dreaming subject; instead it asks, what are
we dreaming as a people?
Social dreaming was (re)developed at the Tavistock

Institute in the 1980s, drawing upon many non-Western
and indigenous dreaming practices. As social dreaming
practitioner Laurie Slade describes it, at the core of social
dreaming is the idea that:
[...] our dreams may speak of the social realities
we are embedded in - as families, as groups, as
communities, as cultures – as much as they speak of
the inner life of a dreamer. This idea would come as
no surprise in any of the traditional dream cultures
of the world – whether historic or contemporary - in
Africa, Asia, Oceania, in North and Central and South
America. 1
Recent academic work seems to concur that contemporary
Western ontologies are “virtually alone in their (historically
recent) assumption that dreaming is a purely intra-psychic
phenomenon”. 2 Social dreaming goes beyond notions of
individuated, personal instances of dreaming, building on
the idea that the act of sharing of our dreams can create
possibilities for new collective thought about our wider
social context. This act of sharing can help people “learn,
remember and change by integrating daily experience within
larger cultural structures that may falter in a particular life
confrontation or historical moment – particularly, perhaps,
this new global historical moment”. 3
My work sits within a rich context, drawing on the work
of artists, academics and practitioners who use dreams
as means for alternative collective futuring. As poet and
abolitionist scholar Jackie Wang wrote, “the profession of
the poet is dreaming”; the revolutionary aesthetics of dreams
are key to the development of an abolitionist imagination
that is capable of “shattering the realism of the prison” 4 , and
of doing “the work of creating openings where there were
previously none”. 5 For Frantz Fanon, dreaming is a mode of
cognition with spatial and temporal properties that lends a
decolonial potency:
I dream I am jumping, swimming, running and
climbing. I dream I burst out laughing, I am leaping
across a river and chased by a pack of cars that
never catches up with me. During colonisation the
colonised subject frees himself night after night
between nine in the evening and six in the morning. 6
This is less dream as personal wish-fulfillment, as it is
dream as communal wish-creation. Sidarta Ribeiro, a
neurologist and dream expert, holds that dreams developed
as ‘probabilistic oracles’ in which we simulate possible
scenarios in a drive to create new realities within our
communities. Indeed, Ribeiro believes that day and night
dreaming have had a hand in the majority of human
innovation throughout history. 7
In writing about one of my previous works, in sleep it made
itself present to them, Hussein Mitha quoted from Ariella
Aïsha Azoulay’s Potential History, Unlearning Imperialism, a
text that they felt was key in informing their understanding
of the dream as a zone in which it is possible to counter
capitalist, colonial realities, as well as undermining
individualist notions of self and linear temporality: 8
My refusal doesn’t try to dream up a new category.
It is rather a refusal to accept that our predecessors’
dreams — not necessarily our parents’, but their
parents’ or grandparents’ — can no longer be ours,
as if the three tenses of past, present, and future
that separate us and fix us in different eras were not
invented exactly for this purpose. 9
Azoulay denies the Western waking world’s division of
past, present and future as distinct categories; viewing
this as a process that separates us from our collective
histories, which she believes are alive, here, and have a
claim in the ‘now’. My previous work has drawn on this idea
of dreams serving to provide modes of radical collectivity.

For my 2021 show in sleep it made itself present to them at
Collective Gallery, I recorded conversations with my mother
Hamideh Heydari-Waite, a psychotherapist and anthropology
researcher, to create an installation that explored our
experiential knowledge of social dreaming in relation to some
Muslim and Zoroastrian traditions:
[...]what we think of as individual stress or private
pains are actually social suffering and social pains
- or social dreams. One way to neutralise them is to
locate them inside individual people, to take their
potency away and their collective power away. 10
methods of research, making and presentation that are, in
themselves, informed by dream-logics.
There is an increasing amount of quantitative evidence
regarding the myriad issues we face, from (impending and
present) ecological disaster to the legacies of colonialism.
While we have both the knowledge and technological
means of addressing these issues, there appears little
impetus, urgency or even hope of doing so. Could affective,
transrational and symbolic practices help us nurture
transformative visions of our futures that do not yield to the
(apparently insurmountable) limitations of our present?
The project I am developing as a Culture Collective Artist
in Residence at Govanhill Baths, Dreamlands (2022-23),
will be a cross-disciplinary body of work that weaves
together different images, objects and moments drawn
from an ongoing series of workshops, activities and
collaborations. This is an experimental project that centres
two ongoing group strands - The Dreamlands Pottery (a
collective of women* from global majority*** backgrounds
exploring themes of dreaming through working with clay),
and in walking together we make the path (a monthly
social dreaming workshop open to people of marginalised
genders**) - alongside public facing events, pamphlets,
screenings and installations. I hope to co-create and share
Dreamlands with artistic, activist and public communities
of interest, while centering knowledge from a decolonial
feminist perspective.
While often viewed as a creative practice, current
institutional forms of social dreaming are predominantly
practised within clinical, academic or therapeutic settings.
It is practised by and within closed communities of interest
that are inaccessible to those without prior cultural capital
or the academic training to understand the applied language
and theory used. I hope to explore the potential of dreams in
community contexts and contemporary art settings; using

* my use of the word women is inclusive of trans and intersex women
** my use of the phrase marginalised genders includes transgender women,
cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary people, and other gender
identities that have been systematically oppressed by those in power,
both historically and in the present.
*** global majority is a collective term that refers to people who are Black,
Asian, Brown, mixed-heritage and/or indigenous to the global south.
1. Laurie Slade, Dreams in search of a dreamer: Concepts, praxis
and potentials of social dreaming, Faculty of Medical
Psychotherapy – Royal College of Psychiatrists Annual
Conference, 2021, p.3
2. Robin E. Sheriff, The Anthropology of Dreaming in Historical
Perspective, in Jeanette Mageo and Robin E. Sheriff (eds), New
Directions in the Anthropology of Dreaming, p. 23-49, Routledge,
2021, p.37
3. Ibid. p.38
4. Jackie Wang, Carceral Capitalism, Semiotext(e) and MIT Press,
2018
5. Jackie Wang, The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The
Void, Nightboat Books, 2021
6. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Translated by R.
Philcox, Grove Press, 2004, p.15
7. Sidarta Ribeiro, recorded talk from Urgency Intensive: Dreaming
and Futuring, Jan Van Eyck Academie (10/03/2022), Web URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRr53aCu4dI
8. Hussein Mitha, Reworking the world’s past from the very
beginning, exhibition text for in sleep it made itself present to
them, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2021
9. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism,
Verso, 2019, p. Xiv
10. Mina Heydari-Waite in conversation with Hamideh Heydari-Waite,
installation audio from in sleep it made itself present to them,
Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2021
Cinema
The Audio
Dreamlands:

This publication showcases immersive sound pieces and
audio stories exploring dream states. All of these works
were played at Dreamlands: The Audio-Cinema, a series of
listening events for Govanhill International Festival 2022.
The events were a collaboration by two of the Govanhill
Baths Culture Collective Artists in Residence Ros Fraser
and Mina Heydari-Waite; and also featured audio works from
Sofia Saldanha, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jiří Slavičínský. The
Audio-Cinema was made possible thanks to Radio Atlas;
an English-language home for subtitled audio from around
the world. We’d also like to thank vocalist Sara Lawson for
performing at the live events.
Ros Fraser mixed and designed compositional segments
between each piece that was shared as part of Dreamlands:
The Audio-Cinema.
Ros Fraser is radio maker and sound artist based in Glasgow. She’s produced
radio documentaries and created sound work for installations, podcasts, film
scores and internet radio. In her role as a Culture Collective Artist in Residence
at Govanhill Baths, Ros is exploring sound as a social justice issue. She’s
researching how communities can experience a lack of agency in their sonic
environments and an unequal access to silence (with severe health impacts as
a result). Connected to this, her work investigates ways in which we might also
utilise sound as a tool to access more open and connected states.
Web:
https://soundcloud.com/ros-fraser
1. WHO (World Health Organisation) Regional Office for Europe,
Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region, pg. 1

in walking
together we
make the path

in walking together we make the path
(Glasgow Southside, SS22)
Mina Heydari-Waite
A collective of voices weave together a dreamy, sensorial
soundscape, sharing fragments drawn from a series of social
dreaming workshops held in Glasgow’s Southside. Social
dreaming is a reflective practice in which people share their
dreams and associated thoughts, layering a collaborative
collage of images, ideas, cultural references and feelings.
How might our individual dreams manifest if we treat them
as contributions to a shared imagining of the world? The
SS22 dreamers included Lisa Bradley, Fibi Cowley, Kirstin
Halliday, Mina Heydari-Waite, Ane Lopez, Martyna Maz, Anna
Porubcansky, Mindy Ptolomey, Connie Arya Rose, Erika
Stevenson, Muna Sultan and Molly Mae Whawell. The sound
piece was created by Mina, alongside producer Ane Lopez
and sound designer William Aikman, as part of Dreamlands
- Mina’s project as a Culture Collective Artist in Residence at
Govanhill Baths. have a recurring dream.
Mina Heydari-Waite is British-Iranian artist living and working in Glasgow.
She has built a body of work in a range of contexts, including: working with
communities in collaborative capacities, co-authoring artworks, workshops and
resources, as well as creating works across mediums (installation, sculpture,
video, print and sound) for gallery settings. Central to her practice is an interest
in the relationships between places and communities, their histories and possible
futures. Her current work explores the social potentials of dream states and
logics.
Web:
Instagram:
Twitter:
www.minaheydariwaite.com
@minaheydariwaite
@MinaWaite

I have a recurring dream.
I go into a room and turn the light on and the light doesn’t
work. And then I’ll go to another place in the house and I’ll try
another light switch and it still doesn’t work.
I was needing to punch someone and I was being completely
ineffective, just not being able to get that connection.
And then I can’t find my password.
I can’t find my phone or I need to contact somebody
somehow to tell them something, and I can’t operate my
phone and I keep pushing buttons. And I know that I’m
missing my flight and I can’t do anything about it.
We were trying to walk along this beach together in this
howling, howling wind and rain that was just getting stronger
and stronger….. And we all had umbrellas, walking together
like roman soldiers with their shields like a tortoise. We came
to this huge bridge - like the golden gate bridge but bigger
- and we were struggling to get across. I didn’t know where
we were going or where we were coming from. The water
from the sky kept coming down and the water underneath the
bridge began to rise.
And it became quite clear that we were all really in peril and
that we might not make it across. All of a sudden this huge
wave came, swept us off the bridge and woke us up.
No matter how hard I try I just can’t do it.
A white horse with grey speckles was on this ferry that I was
on. The ferry stopped to unload. And just before it was about
to leave again, at the last moment, the horse did this James
Bond-esque move and jumped from my ferry onto this other
boat.
Pressing the switch and… nothing.
It’s that feeling of walking against the wind.
I know there is a puddle of water in my bag, and that

my phone is in it.
My dreams recently have kinda been like mundane work
interactions. Like - I knew I was being gaslit by all the
people around me, but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t find an ally. I
couldn’t make it known to anybody that I was being really set
up.
We are driving down Kenmure Street. Then we turn into this
big black warehouse with a plain door.
We open the door and walk down these steps leading to this
almost roman bath like thing, with big stone columns… and
then water was coming up to my calves.
I was wearing these wellies, and I could feel the cold
water seeping in. I knew it couldn’t be real, and I knew I
was really feeling the water.
I was surrounded by black.
And the blackness was this really viscous liquid that I was
sinking in… Then the space that I was in became a very thin
sheet of paper and I was in my office.
I saw somebody pushed me into a hole. Somebody I was
walking with…
There is an image in my mind’s eye, from when I was a
teenager. It’s my mother, in complete darkness, and the front
of her body is… open. Her chest is open. And I go to put
her beating heart back in her chest. It was so painful to do
because I knew I was hurting her, but also giving her life at
the same time.
Watching my mother have cysts cut out from her
back when I was probably about 2 or 3 years old, and

finding out she was flesh.
I don’t know if that’s a dream.
that I grew up in. It was like, kind of, erm, a pink feeling, this
feeling of this colour.
Then when I looked up, the baby had melted like a pink
bar of… oh, like, you know, the end bit of a bar of soap.
I’ve noticed that I am having a lot more vivid dreams since
coming here. I was making my lunch in the microwave and
I just completely drifted off and I could see some sort of
smoke or something burning. And it was probably only for
about 10 seconds - but it felt like for the longest period of
time, I was just watching this little bit of smoke do this dance.
And there was just this pink residue. I remember being
like, “My mom’s gonna kill me. I melted the baby.”
I’m climbing up a mountain that is impossibly tall. And
there’s a long, long path up it. And there is such an intensity
in putting one foot in front of the other. The rocks under my
feet are green and gold and so is the distance.
I was at number 45 sitting in front of the fire and my little
cousin was on my knee. She had a really pretty white
party dress on. And I knew it was gonna happen before it
happened, but the dress caught fire.
It didn’t hurt her. It hurt me. It melted into my back. I was in
a lot of pain and I went to the hospital, but they just gave me
some pain killers and then they wouldn’t help me anymore.
There was plastic - stuck on my back.
I was being myself, um, at my age. And it was just me, not
even a version of me - yeah, I was fully and completely
myself. In the dream I was lying on a bed playing with a baby.
The baby was so young that it couldn’t really focus on me.
It was kind of like, looking all over the place and trying to,
trying to find me. I realised that the bed the baby was laying
on was the same bed that my mom used to have, in the flat
I always have dreams where I was born, back home. In my
dreams I never see Scotland, even though I’ve been here 50

years.
swimming through the sun. When I came up I was still in this
concrete room with no windows. I didn’t find it strange.
And there was this really deep diving pool in the
centre. And these huge, like maybe like 9, 10 -
actually maybe 50 metre tall windows. I taught
myself to hold my breath and hang out at the
very bottom. And the light, I have the memory of
the light in the water. I remember the light hitting
my body, in the pool that just felt like it went
metres and metres and metres down.
I’ve been thinking about a dream that I was a bit embarrassed
to share earlier. I used to dream that my mom who isn’t white
was white. Nothing else really happened. It was horrible.
And I felt like I was on fire.
I see so much water. Even though I usually don’t go
to the mosque or anything, I phoned and said “I’m
drowning”.
That feeling of not being able to turn on a light - it reminded
me of a dream that I had, where my daughter - who is 18 - and
I were on a series of bus journeys together. And I had this
huge bin bag, with lots of our clothes in it.
It was inside this concrete building with no windows. I was
by myself. I remember walking into the pool and thinking
it was really, really cold. But the further I got in, the warmer
it became. And so I then kind of, okay, went down deeper
into the water - swimming along really, really close to the
bottom. I became surrounded by this blue tile mosaic. It was
like, really sparkly, with all of these sunbeams. It was like
And every time we were transferring bus, the clothes would
fall out of the bag, getting heavier and wetter. When I was
paying, I was asking for an adult and a child ticket.
The driver looked at my daughter and was like, “Are you sure
she’s a child?”.

Well she was.
I think about the weight of all the water on top of
me and how if it came crashing down, it would
squash me.
How did she feel on that bus? Your daughter of uncertain
age…
In a dream I had for years when I was really young, I’m on a
double decker bus with my mum. And slowly, at each stop,
people get off - until it is just us. Once everyone gets off, my
mom gets off. She’s like, “What the hell are you doing? Get
off the bus!”
I had run away from my husband and I was hiding from him
inside the belly of a snake. And I watched him walk past -
kind of from inside the snake. I don’t really remember what
he looked like at all. He was just this hazy presence. I just
know he was my husband and when he went away, I burst out
of the snake, and I was, like… laughing hysterically. And then
music started playing in the wind and I just felt so happy. And
then I woke up.
And I can’t move. And the bus doors close. Then, when I
finally manage to move my body, I go up to the driver’s booth
and there’s just like, no one in the driver’s seat.
And the bus keeps going.
Sometimes when I swim very deep under water,

Blindfold
Yourself

Blindfold Yourself
Jiri Slavicinsky
An impressionist documentary that takes place entirely in
the dark. What can happen if two complete strangers meet,
for the first time, in complete darkness? Having to form
their first impression not through sight, but through sound
and touch? Blindfold Yourself was made in November 2016
in Prague, at the Hug workshop/performance organised
by British composer Verity Standen and the Prague-based
association Voicescope.
Jiri Slavicinsky is a Czech radio documentary maker based in Prague. In his
work he loves to use field recordings and tell stories through immersive sound
scenes. His most powerful documentary experiences were when he was capturing
social and environmental change in a fishing community in rural Newfoundland,
among shepherds in the Mongolian steppe, or recording with his neighbours in a
Moravian Sudetenland town where he comes from.

SINGING
Please blindfold yourself
English
ZPĚV
Please blindfold yourself
Čeština
Woman 1:
I heard footsteps in the distance, and female
voices… very soft sopranos, like girl’s voices. It
was like mermaids singing.
Žena 1:
Zdálky přicházely zvuky kroků a ženskejch
hlasů, hodně jemnejch ... sopránů … dívčích.
Bylo to jako zpěv nějakejch víl.
Woman 2:
The singers kept circling around. It was as if the
sound engulfed you completely.
Žena 2:
Ti zpěváci jak chodili okolo, tak člověk je
pohlcenej tím zvukem úplně ze všech stran.
Man 1:
The voice kept coming closer, until it was right
among us… So many harmonious sounds, a
feast for the ears.
Muž 1:
Se ten hlas pomalinku blížil k nám, až vyloženě
putoval mezi námi ... Tolik harmonických zvuků
… To byla pastva pro uši.
Man 2:
We enter the hall full of sound and harmony…
and add our voices to it. The energy just keeps
growing.
Muž 2:
My už vstupujeme do toho sálu do zvuků
harmonie … a postupně se přidávají naše hlasy.
Ta energie v tom sále se zvyšuje, zesiluje.
Please blindfold yourself and remain blindfolded …
Please blindfold yourself and remain blindfolded …
Man 1:
Woman 1:
We were told to blindfold ourselves. So I sat
down and did what they told me.
Once we blindfolded ourselves, things really
escalated… I had shivers down my spine and all
over my body.
At a moment like this, time stops, and so does
all that chaos around me… Once I closed my
eyes, it was as if I was looking inside myself,
into darkness, but also peace and quiet from all
my thoughts.
Muž 1:
Žena 1:
Jsme dostali instrukce, abychom si zavázali oči
páskami … Takže jsem se hezky pohodlně
uvelebil, zavázal si oči.
Potom, co jsme si zavázali ty oči, to začalo
gradovat … Mně začal běhat mráz po zádech a
potom po celém těle.
Pro mě je to vždycky chvíle, kdy se zastaví čas
a všechno to kolem mě, všechen ten můj chaos
kolem se zastaví … a já jako kdybych těma
zavřenýma očima pohlížela dovnitř do sebe …
do nějaký nejdřív asi tmy a potom do nějakýho
klidu a ticha … a ticha i od těch myšlenek.

SINGING
ZPĚV
Woman 2:
And then I heard someone stopping right by me.
It was a woman. She took my hands, they were
so warm… and I was cold.
Žena 2:
A pak už jsem slyšela, že se zřejmě u mě někdo
zastavil .. A byla to žena, vzala mě za ruce.
Hrozně hezky hřála a já jsem byla studená.
Woman 1:
Man 2:
Woman 2:
I heard a male voice coming closer, and then he
grabbed me by my elbows, gently, so he
wouldn’t scare me, I guess. The voice was so
strong and beautiful.
As a part of the experience, we let them give us
a hug. It’s up to them how much they are willing
to give. I had to start with their distrust, fear,
uncertainty… and managed to get them to trust
me. When you get someone to cuddle up to you,
fully and trustingly, that’s a great gift.
The lady smelled like my grandma’s garden.
Really. She had this floral scent (laughs).
And then I just relaxed and fell into her arms.
Žena 1:
Muž 2:
Žena 2:
Sem ke mně se přiblížil mužský hlas a chytil mě
za lokty, jemně, asi aby mě nevyděsil. Ten hlas
byl hodně krásnej a hodně silnej.
V průběhu toho představení, nebo toho prožitku,
jim dáme možnost aby nás objali. A pak je
samozřejmě na každém, kolik dovolí. Mně se
stalo, že jsem prošel cestu od té počáteční
možná nedůvěry, strachu, nejistoty … k tomu,
že jsem pak dostal plnou důvěru … To je velkej
dárek, když se k vám pak někdo s plnou důvěrou
přitulí.
Ta paní voněla jak babičky zahrádka, opravdu,
jak nějaký kytičky.
Pak jsem se uvolnila a úplně jsem jí padla do
náručí.
BREATHING
DECH
Man 2:
The silent space is permeated by the sound of
human breath.
Muž 2:
Do toho ticha, do toho prostoru vstoupí lidský
dech …
It’s like a shaman’s journey for me.
Pro mě to je šamanská cesta.
Man 1:
I felt sort of like a cogwheel in some kind of
gear mechanism, a machine, a piece of
equipment… a steam engine or something like
that.
Muž 1:
Já jsem si v ten moment připadal jako kolečko
ozubený … v soukolí, ve stroji, v pracovním
stroji … nějaký takový parní stroj.

SINGING
ZPĚV
Woman 2:
Man 2:
The most beautiful moment for me was when
the lady sat me back down, but kept holding my
hands for a moment longer. She caressed me,
but then she moved away, and I felt her less and
less…
I felt her every touch, and I tried to draw it out,
because I knew that once we separated, it would
be over.
She moved her fingers across the back of my
hand, and kept stretching my fingers and wished
they would be endless so I could feel her touch
for a moment longer.
People tend to try to hold on to the touch, keep it
happening. But it must end eventually.
Žena 2:
Muž 2:
To byl pro mě úplně nejhezčí moment, kdy mě ta
paní posadila zpátky na židli a jenom mě ještě
chvilku držela za ruce … Hladila mě a pomalinku
se vzdalovala a já jsem ji cítila míň a míň …
Já jsem si fakt uvědomovala každej ten dotek
a snažila jsem se prodloužit ten moment, kdy se
naposledy rozpojíme a už prostě bude konec.
Jak mi jela po hřbetě ruky, tak jsem úplně
natahovala prsty a snažila jsem se, aby byly
nekonečný a abych ještě chvilku cítila ten
poslední, poslední dotek.
Je tam tendence ještě chvíli, ještě chvíli si to
podržet. Ale pak samozřejmě ten konec musí
přijít.
SINGING
Man 2:
And then everything grows quiet.
ZPĚV
Muž 2:
A pak je ticho.

A Walk
Through My
Cũcũ’s Farm

A Walk Through My Cũcũ’s Farm
Nyokabi Kariũki
“In December 2020, my family and I were able to visit my
Cũcũ (Grandmother) in her home in Githũnguri, Kenya. We
walked around the farm — just as we always do when we
visit — but this time, I felt like I was watching our visit from
the distance of a dream, where small things suddenly felt
big and metaphorical. I found myself paying more attention:
to the ground, to our languages of Kiswahili and Kikuyu, to
the trees and fruit. Like the things around us were silently
teaching me.”
Nyokabi Kariũki is a Kenyan composer and sound artist based between Kenya
and the USA. Illuminated by musical sensibilities from her African upbringing and
training in Western classical contexts, Nyokabi shares a unique artistic voice that
is ever-evolving, reflecting a love for experimentation and inquiry, as well as a
commitment to the preservation of African thought, language and stories.
Web:
Instagram:
nkariuki.com & https://nyokabikariuki.bandcamp.com/album/
peace-places-kenyan-memories
@nkariuki_

MAIN VOICE
they are teaching me, slowly
but I, too...
SECONDARY VOICES
English
MAIN VOICE
wananifundisha pole pole
lakini mimi pia
SECONDARY VOICES
Kiswahili and Kikuyu
I teach myself
najifunza
let me tell you
hĩ, reke gĩ kwĩre
is this how strong it is?
let me come
today, we walked around
Grandmother’s farm
i don’t see any problem
the sun was very hot, but...
...we were able to see maize,
sugarcane...
avocados
but I, too...
I teach myself...
...slowly
today, the sun was very hot,
but...
let me tell you
but I, too...
ai! kaĩ gĩkoragwo kĩ na hinya
atĩa?
ke njũke
leo, tulizunguka shamba ya
Cũcũ
ndĩonaga harĩ ũru, (mhh)
jua ilikua kali, lakini
tuliona mahindi,
miwa,
maparachichi
lakini mimi pia
najifunza
pole pole
leo, jua ilikua kali, lakini
hĩ, reke gĩ kwĩre
lakini mimi pia

we were able to see maize,
sugarcane...
avocados
I teach myself...
today, we walked around
Grandmother’s farm
tuliona mahindi,
miwa
maparachichi
najifunza
tulizunguka shamba ya Cũcũ
just slowly.
here he has cut the grass
very well...
pole pole tu.
gũkũ atinĩtie nyeki wega
mũno.
I love my language
it’s only the fence remaining.
no rũgiri rũtiganĩtie
of Swahili
ndio, ninapenda hii lugha
yangu
today, we walked around
Grandmother’s farm
I teach myself
ya Swahili
but I, too...
I teach myself
I love my language
of Swahili
today, the sun was very hot,
but...
my language
of Swahili
leo, tulizunguka shamba ya
Cũcũ
lakini mimi pia
najifunza
ndio, ninapenda hii lugha
yangu
najifunza
jua ilikua kali, lakini
they are teaching me, slowly
ya Swahili
lugha yangu
the sun was very hot, but...
we were able to see maize,
sugarcane...
avocados
I teach myself
I teach myself
today, the sun was very hot,
but...
we were able to see maize,
wananifundisha pole pole
jua ilikua kali, lakini
tuliona mahindi,
ya Swahili
najifunza
najifunza

avocados
miwa,
maparachichi
jua ilikua kali, lakini
tuliona mahindi,
Is it pushing?
maparachichi
Yeah.
Is it pushing?
Let it open.
Yeah.
today, we walked around
Grandmother’s farm
we saw maize...
sugarcane...
slowly
avocados
slowly
my language of Swahili
what is that?
Let it open.
Let it open.
leo, tulizunguka shamba ya
Cũcũ
tuliona mahindi,
miwa
pole pole
maparachichi
pole pole
lugha yangu ya Swahili
Kĩu nĩ kĩĩ?
Let it open.
slowly
slowly
they are teaching me
...slowly.
pole pole
pole pole
wananifundisha
...pole pole.

The Piano

The Piano
Sofia Saldanha
A flat in downtown Lisbon. The sound of a mysterious piano
echoes in the silence of the night. A woman listens carefully
and attentively. Her eyes are wide shut. The piano lulls her
to sleep. Reality and dreams have a similar nature. Dreams
end when we wake up. Reality ends when we fall asleep.
The piece was originally produced for the CeDa - Centro de
Dramaturgia e Argumento and Rádio Antena 2.
Sofia Saldanha is an award winning audio producer who has had work featured
on radio stations across the world. She started her radio adventure in Portugal
at Rádio Universitária do Minho, has a masters degree in Radio and is a graduate
of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Sofia is part of In The Dark, a nonprofit
organisation based in London, that presents audio documentaries from
around the world to live audiences.
Web:
Instagram:
Facebook:
https://radio-sofia.tumblr.com
https://www.instagram.com/saldanhaforest_/
https://www.facebook.com/sicorax/

It was around 4 o’clock in the morning when I suddenly sat
up in bed.
Glissando on the piano
Someone was playing the piano furiously.
Glissando on the piano
It was the first day of the year and I loved that piano. A piano
I’ve never seen, but I listen to it everyday. When I fell asleep
again I dreamt that I was holding hands with a piano.
Piano music
I always thought that if I were a musical instrument I would
be a piano. They are sturdy and delicate, and sometimes
need tuning. When I look at someone’s hands I always notice
if they have pianist’s hands.
Piano music far away; rain
I hardly ever hear the piano during the day, but every night
I’d fall asleep to its music. Sometimes the sound of the rain
would mingle with the tune.
Piano music far away; rain
It was by chance that I saw the piano.
Piano music far away; street ambience
I was walking down the road at the back, when I looked
inside a window and saw it.
Piano music closer; street ambience; car passing by
I started passing by there frequently.
English
Deviam ser umas 4 da manhã dei um salto na cama.
Glissando no piano
Alguém tocava piano furiosamente.
Glissando no piano
Era o primeiro dia do ano e eu adorava aquele piano.
Glissando no piano
Um piano que eu nunca tinha visto, mas que ouvia todos os
dias. Quando voltei a adormecer sonhei que estava de mãos
dadas com um piano.
Música piano
Sempre pensei que se tocasse um instrumento seria um
piano. São robustos e delicados e de vez em quando
precisam de afinação. Quando olho para as mãos de alguém
reparo logo se tem mãos de pianista.
Música piano ao longe; chuva
A este piano raramente o ouvia de dia, mas adormecia
sempre com ele. Às vezes misturava-se com o som da chuva.
Música piano ao longe; chuva
Foi por acaso que um dia descobri onde estava o piano.
Música piano ao longe; ambiente de rua
Estava a passar na rua de trás, espreitei por uma janela e vi
um pianista a tocar.
Música piano perto; ambiente de rua; carro a passar
Português

Piano music closer; street ambience
Days went by, months...
Piano music; street ambience
One day, it was around 4 o’clock in the morning...
Glissando on the piano
... I sat up in bed.
Glissando on the piano; strong wind
There was something disturbing about that sound. In the
morning I looked out of the window and I saw a crane
hoisting the piano. A strong wind was blowing and the piano
was swaying so much. My heart stopped.
Strong wind
That day, when I opened the front door, there was a package
on the floor, and inside it was a music box.
Strong wind; music box playing
Comecei a passar por lá frequentemente.
Música piano perto; ambiente de rua
Passaram-se dia, meses...
Ambiente de rua
Um dia, deviam ser umas 4 da manhã...
Glissando no piano
... dei um salto na cama.
Glissando no piano; vento forte
Havia qualquer coisa de perturbador naquele som. De manhã
espreitei pela janela e vi o piano descer agarrado a uma grua.
O vento soprava muito forte e o piano abanava tanto. O meu
coração parou.
Vento forte
Nesse dia abri a porta de casa e tinha um envelope à porta.
Lá dentro estava uma caixinha de música.
Vento forte; caixa de música a tocar.

Design by Phoebe Kerr