In conversation: Phoebe Boswell, Laura Lima, Nduduzo Makhathini & Elvira Dyangani Ose

About

This discussion includes a welcome by curator Katherine Finerty to IN·FLO·RES·CENCE’s focus on the cross-modality of art and sound, followed by Elvira Dyangani Ose’s introduction of the three speakers including: one of the project’s commissioned composers, South African Nduduzo Makhathini (who’s a pianist, scholar, and healer from South Africa); multimedia artist Phoebe Boswell based in London (whose drawing and immersive multimedia practice references gestures of protest and healing through language, the female form, nature, and the sublime), and hailing from Rio Laura Lima (whose conceptual practice references ritual, installation and performance with relation to bodies, extraction, life organisms, animals, and improvisation).

This conversation delves into what is the aesthetic of the ritual, and how creators can claim the legacy and transformation of cultural ceremony. It explores subjective creative approaches to ritual: the invitation, offering, and allure of the collective experience of a portal and communion – ritual as a vessel for intergenerational knowledge and collective healing. Through sound, music, and art, ritual is discussed as a form of storytelling, the performativity of orality, and immersive experiences – from a legacy of time to an adaptability of different paradigms, from oral, gestural, and technological expressions. Finally, this conversation speaks deeply about breath: as a sound, a physical essence – as silence, but a silence that can only exist with breath… A physical and spiritual translation of healing and hope.