Lagos Soundscapes
http://www.lagossoundscapes.com
The Lagos Soundscapes is an ongoing project that explores Lagos as a vibrant African Mega city. The project is invested in acoustics, however, what is central here is that the accumulated sound defines the character of the city of Lagos. The amalgamation of these sounds and more, defines the city Lagos as the economic, commercial and cultural capital of Nigeria.
The basics of the project involves recording and collecting definitive sounds that sum up the character and vibrancy of Lagos, a city very much alive because of its eclectic and rich soundscapes. The project maps the contour of the relationship between Lagos population and its generated soundscapes, and the recordings made from this direct engagement with the city are utilized in sound compositions and installations.
Lagos Soundscapes installations: Migration series [Conceptual Premise]:
The relocation of Lagos Soundscapes to foreign public spaces combines the concept of time, spatial configuration, and the function of the imaginary, in order to interrogate the current issues of migration, especially from the Global South to the Global North, the place/displacement of multiculturalism, and the quest for sameness in an increasingly globalizing world.
In installing Lagos soundscapes on these spaces, I am interested in how the public engages with what may well be a subversive strangeness. Subversive and strange in the sense that the acoustic character of Lagos is a melting-pot of seemingly different sounds of chaos that only approximate a sort of rhythm to those who understand the internal dynamics of Lagos, one of the most populated cities in Africa.
Given the recent debates on migration, multiculturalism and citizenship, I am interested in the phenomenology of reception. How will a predominantly Western public react to a subversive disorder that is out of place in their seemingly well-organized society? How will they consume what is obviously foreign? Will Lagos Soundscapes be aurally consumed as exotic, accepted as harmless strangeness or dealt with the strong force of rejection?
The installations requires a phenomenological immersion that has less to do with visuality but with the imaginary in its transportation and relocation of the viewer to a different temporality and spatiality that is not physical but aural and auratic.
See installations