Liboi’s Whispers of Power. MURATHE NGIGI / BRIAN KHAVALAJI.
THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / VISUAL ART DEPT.
A Conceptual Show Bringing Back the Originality of African Art
Liboi’s Whispers of Power. MURATHE NGIGI / BRIAN KHAVALAJI.
THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / VISUAL ART DEPT.
A Conceptual Show Bringing Back the Originality of African Art
In his 1935 essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ Walter Benjamin, the philosopher and cultural critic, posits that from time immemorial, art was always created for its cult value rather than exhibition value. Simply, Benjamin says that when the cavemen carved stones and painted on the walls of their caves, they were not doing so for the other cavemen to stand before these painted walls and weave poetry about how deeply they were moved or how they could not peel their eyes off the walls. The curved stone or the cave painting was an offering to the gods—a medium of worship through which the Cave painter and his kinsmen would come together in communion with the deities to bless their hunts, protect their families, and safeguard their health and prosperity.
Art was never meant to just be observed, it was to be experienced. There was never supposed to be a distance between art and its consumer where the artist is a pedestalized god far removed from human trivialities that are his audience. However, through the incremental growth of technology, according to Benjamin, this chasm has only increased as the consumption of art became more exhibitionist and less cult. This means that the consumers of art became more of observers or spectators of art rather than active participants who were fully engaged with the art in a heightened state of consciousness.
Over time, technology encouraged the reproduction of works of art through films, photography, printing, and other media. This reproduction, Benjamin argues, led to the creation of art without original or as he writes, an art without, ‘its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence.’ The untainted originality is what allows you to engage critically with a piece. It is an immersive experience that transcends the physical and auditory manifestations. It is the ridges in the brushstrokes you notice on an original Picasso painting. It is the bold yet thoughtful face of Michelangelo’s David, you see when you stand face to face with the original masterpiece at Galleria dell’ Accademia di Firenze in Italy. It is the surreal experience you have at Nairobi’s Sarakasi Dome when the light shines on the magical Maulid Owino transforming Wakio Mzenge’s story into a beautiful rhythmic contortion of his body. In the background, Liboi’s haunting lyrics carry the emotions in a demure and retiring tone.
WHISPERS OF POWER: AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
This was the Nairobi edition of Whispers of Power an immersive show by Liboi, a fast-rising African folk singer, songwriter and instrumentalist. When speaking with culture writer Frank Njugi for Afrocritik, Liboi described the show as ‘a two-hour, multi-disciplinary, site-specific conceptual performance that explores the theme of “safety and security” with the notion of finding these qualities internally before seeking them externally.’ Here, art in its original traditional truth is created, and the audience is not just a mere spectator but an active part of this creation. In this realm of immersive performance, the audience does not need to be told how to feel since they are one with the creators, sharing in their status of exalted existence. For as the creators seek beauty, so does the audience. And as they transform themselves for their art, so does the audience.
Liboi has already released two EPs, State of Being and Safari. Njugi describes her music as an ‘exploration of diverse human experiences … besparkled with an emotional urgency.’ For Whispers of Power, she teamed up with choreographer, Maulid Owino, and storyteller, voice, and stage actor, Wakio Mzenge, to create a truly multi-disciplinary show incorporating a meticulously designed multisensory environment where the audience were integral participants.
‘The show was inspired by a convergence of personal experiences with my cultural influences, and also a profound desire to create a transformative and immersive artistic experience,’ Liboi further explained to Njugi. Whispers of Power does not pretend to be universal. It’s just for the people at Sarakasi Dome in that present time and place—occupying Benjamin’s precious, ‘unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’
On 24 May 2024, Liboi led the Whispers of Power team in an eclectic immersive performance in Kenya’s lakeside city of Kisumu at Dunga Hill Camp. Brian Khavalaji, the team’s publicist, told me that in Kisumu, the show used a love story narrative to highlight the recent flooding and displacement problem in the region and emphasized the need to preserve Lake Victoria as an essential cultural identity.
‘In Kisumu, the production tried to use every part of Dunga Hill Camp, including a short canoe ride in the lake to create meaning of the story,’ Khavalaji told me. I imagined the golden rays of the setting sun reflecting on the waters of the lake, and the quiet breeze softly rocking the canoes into a kind of dance as Liboi’s singing provided the rhythm. It must have been magical. Reporting on the show, The Standard Newspaper wrote that it was, ‘an artistic spectacle that defied conventional norms, seamlessly blending music, storytelling, and dance into an immersive experience.’ While there are no lakes in Nairobi, I was still very curious to see what the show had in store.
8 June 2024. I arrived at Sarakasi Dome a little past 4 p.m. and was first taken aback by the architectural genius of the building’s design, then by the colourful lot already thronging the entrance, chatting a little too loudly in small groups. There were all the culture enthusiasts and artsy sots in this gathering, engaging with easy familiarity, and draped crumply but tastefully as the artistic kind tends to be. Despite Nairobi being the largest city in Eastern Africa, the artistic community is only a tiny menagerie. As the crowd grew more boisterous, I noticed a few white folks, possibly tourists or part of the entourage from the French government’s Creation Africa Project who were supporting the tour, I reckoned.
Someone (who obviously had never attended an immersive conceptual show) said we should move in and take up the seats with the best view before the crowd grew any bigger. But we were duly informed that we could not move in until the show begins. So, we hovered about some more, engaged in small talk, caught up on what we’d been up to while complaining to each other about our frustrations in our creative endeavours. Someone will soon suggest we should get some drinks, anything with alcoholic content of eight per cent or more would do, but before we can make the beeline for the drinks section, we are ushered into the building. Whispers of Power, Nairobi edition, was beginning.
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LIBOI’S CONCEPTUAL ART
Gathered at the lobby of Sarakasi Dome, I soon realized I had come expecting performance art, but this was not going to be that; this was an immersive conceptual art experience and it was starting right there in the lobby.
The lobby was quiet but for the breathing of everyone standing packed in the rather limited space. We breathed in a kind of rhythm, almost musical. Then the MC, Maija Rivenburg, spoke into the mic: ‘In the midst of death, art requires a distinct and mystical courage. An audacity that says not only do I have a right to exist, but I believe my existence will add to the fabric of the universe. I will make.’ This was not an exhibition; this was a cult, and we were all worshippers in art.
This must have been what the art philosopher, Sol LeWitt, envisioned when he pioneered the idea of conceptual art, arguing that art could exist as a set of instructions where the artist functioned less as a unique creator and more as a designer of experiential algorithms, democratizing artistic creation.
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‘You are not just an observer today but an active participant in the unfolding drama. Actors will engage with you, and your choices may influence the course of the story,’ Rivenburg told us. On cue, an aerial artist slowly slid down the silks, his snaky body writhing in sync with Liboi’s off-sight voice chanting ‘miale’. We turned on our phone lights as we ascended the spiral staircase, our feet, a hundred stamping steps added the missing drums to Liboi’s chants. It was a haunting sound. Like the Earth tilting on its axis. Like a sprouting seed busting through its shell and pushing its way through the soil. Like the exact moment when the night consumes the day.
I had earlier been informed that the day’s show would focus on mental health with the narrative centring the artists’ struggle with the same—from depression to bouts of anxiety. ‘The idea is to make the audience look deep within and hopefully, they can seek help, talk about their issue,’ a cast member told me. In my circle of artistic friends, I’ve not met one person who was not dealing with one mental issue or another. Among writer circles, we often joke how we are a sad, miserable lot with an emptiness only the next story can fill, and the next, and the next, and the next until we breathe our last. Artists are never satisfied. As legendary dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham, said to Agnes de Mill, ‘No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There’s only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.’
I’m not so sure about artists feeling more alive than others though. Most of us can be quite dead inside. Comedian Richard Pryor wasn’t feeling so alive when he set himself on fire. Author Ernest Hemingway wasn’t feeling so alive when he drove a bullet through his brain. Swedish musician Avicii wasn’t feeling so alive when he ended himself. Van Gogh wasn’t feeling so alive when he chopped off his ear.
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ORIGINAL AFRICAN ART
While we were seated on the cushioned slabs in the dark balcony area, a spotlight shined at the upper corner of the balcony to reveal Wakio Mzenge in character, locked in a kind of monologue trance. She plays a schizophrenic actor who’s growing frustrated when she can’t remember what show she’s supposed to be reading lines for. ‘This is what show again?’ she asked and burst into another stream of trance monologue that sounds like gueyo or sigweya, a type of mourning elegy the Luo people of Kenya use to extol the virtues of the deceased while perpetuating the continuity of life beyond the mere flesh. Is the actor mourning the loss of her art? I wondered. But we all know this. We all can relate to this. We’ve all lived this. I’ve sat before my laptop with an empty Word document unable to form a single word and feared I would never be able to write again. I know of someone else who buried their guitar and swore to never make music again. Another person smashed their laptop on the wall and moved to the village to try farming. There was yet another person who introduced a few strange substances to their bloodstream so they could, ‘have a clear line of communication with the creative muse,’ and never left rehab to this date. So, when Mzenge said, ‘Teko Teko, who has seen my Teko guys you are supposed to echo when I say Teko that’s the way that scene is…’ We shout back, TEKOO!! and our voices vibrate from wall to wall until they are reflected to us as an echo ‘Tekoo’, like the whispers of the ancestral spirits. We are one. We are together in this magic.
As the show progressed, I’m reminded of the old ways, in the decades before I was born when my village’s Nyatiti player—nyatiti is the stringed musical instrument famed Kenyan artist, Ayud Ogada, is known for—would start strumming the strings of the nyatiti and the entire village would join in the music and the dancing around a bonfire as the dogs howled at the moon, and young mothers forgot their half-cooked food on the three-stone mekos to come gyrate their lower ends like possessed kid goats. The show would evolve into a form of worship where the valour and the eminence of the ancestral spirits were extolled. This was back when African art was original and pure. When there was no separation between the creator of art and the consumer of art. This is what Liboi’s Whispers of Power had revived, and after two hours, we left Sarakasi Dome parched and sweaty but feeling like we had lived a lifetime and more⎈
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