Soundbank, an internet interactive exhibition, will see cultural arts outfit Borneo Bengkel bringing collectively 16 musicians from Sabah, Sarawak, Indonesia and Britain to create a digital dwelling archive of sound, music and endangered languages.
This exhibition will stream totally free on Nov 5 at 8pm through Borneo Bengkel’s social media channels.
Highlighting a various and collaborative effort, the digital archive options recordings in a number of indigenous languages from the collaborating nations, together with the extremely endangered Kayan, Dusun and Gaelic languages.
Featured artists embody Sarawakian sape musicians Alena Murang and Ezra Tekola, parap (spontaneous poetic singing) and takna’ (warrior tales) practitioner Adrian Jo Milang, Sabahan singer-songwriter Maya Bayu, Indonesian composer Nursalim Yadi Anugerah, Belfast-based multidisciplinary artist Cameron Clarke and Scottish singer Kaitlin Ross.
This lengthy distance venture additionally spotlights nature, with discipline recordings (morning birdsongs to cicadas within the rainforest).
“There’s such wealthy folks music and cultural heritage in each Borneo and Britain, we wished to deliver these musicians collectively in an revolutionary approach, and use know-how to create dialog by way of music,” says Catriona Maddocks, one of many curators from Borneo Bengkel.
Maddocks, who lived in Sarawak for 11 years, returned to Britain originally of the pandemic in 2020, however remains to be actively working with the Kuching-based Borneo Bengkel’s programmes.
“This Soundbank venture got here from the realisation final 12 months that whereas we have been all so separated from each other, the digital world provides us so many alternatives to attach with individuals from distant locations,” she provides.
In July, the invited collaborators offered and shared just about about their music and artistic works. They then spent the next months accumulating and recording sounds, video and pictures that represented their each day lives.
Adrian, arguably the youngest practitioner of the traditional oral traditions parap and takna’, shares that engaged on the Soundbank venture made him realise the significance of preservation.
“For a lot of, many months I haven’t been in a position to go to the neighborhood elders who I often sing with. Participating on this venture, and sharing our music and recordings on the soundbank, gave me an opportunity to attach with others and see that the work I do is a part of a a lot larger story of indigenous illustration and preserving endangered languages,” he says.
Utilising a newly developed app “Residing Archive”, the musicians then uploaded their works.
The Soundbank venture is a part of Borneo Bengkel’s cross-border programme Bor(neo): North + East, which is supported by the British Council’s Connections By means of Tradition grant programme.
Underneath the identical programme, a cross-cultural poetry slam that includes seven poets from Sarawak and Britain referred to as Lingua Franca was streamed just about in July.
Borneo Bengkel, put collectively in 2017 by Kuching inventive arts hub HAUS KCH and social enterprise Catama Borneo, has been steadily gaining prominence overseas and constructing connections with arts communities in Malaysia.
