Julianknxx, we are what remains of us

Madrid,

After passing through the British Center Barbican or the Gulbenkian Portuguese Modern Art Center, the Encendid House hosts the first institutional project of Julianknxx, in whose creations art, poetry and cinema are combined.

Born in FREETOWN, the capital of Sierra Leone, this author uses his personal experience as a source when challenging and reimagining dominant ideas around the African history and culture: based on the traditions of oral stories and working with a particular aesthetic, he raises in his recordings how we build both local and global narratives, while alluding to survival in liminal spaces, those that remain in the middle entrenched.

By order of the barbican, Julianknxx devised Chorus in Rememory of Flighta multipant cinematographic installation that carried out during a year of displacements by port cities throughout Europe (Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, London, Marseille, Barcelona and Lisbon) and in collaboration with choirs of black members. He compiled his interpretations, also paying attention to his testimonies of life and his contexts, to give rise to a series of films in which to underline the value of the choral songs themselves as a means not to forget and to seek the survival of their cultural differences where they live, far from their origins.

They served as an starting point for this proposal writings by the academics Paule Marshall and Lorna McDaniel and texts of the philosopher Édouard Glissant (You Can Change With The Other While Being Yourself, You Are Not One, You Are Multiple, and You Are Yourself/ You can change with the other being yourself; You are not one, you are multiple and you are yourself), which deepens the constant and fluid character of identities linked to geographies, in the possibility of combining fidelity to roots and adaptation.

Between both destinations, Julianknxx toured about 4,000 kilometers, a distance that in turn allowed him to glimpse the very long perploys that his interviewees knew, and their ancestors, over decades. In his work, a unique chorus, which prays We are what remains of uslinks the voices of each other, influencing how shared music can facilitate the exercise of memory over time and borders.

Julianknxx. Chorus in Rememory of Flight. The house on

The set of the production of this artist investigates what it means to be trapped between multiple stories and places, adopting, in this and other cases, the choir as a metaphor of the community and the alternative roads that those who migrate to tell the stories that have shaped their past and their present, the perception of themselves.

The end point of the exhibition is put by a reading and reflection room, a space for rest where it is possible to consult books of African authors and the diaspora that refer to their memory and interests, in addition to abounding in contemporary critical discourses on these matters. The presence of this area of disconnection in the sample comes to emphasize the importance of listening and participating in alternative ways to narrate the facts that have determined our cultural identities.

This proposal is also part of the programming of Hearhe Verb on Chosen this 2025 to articulate part of the activities of the house on. In noise times, it is intended to promote a attentive listening, which allows you to find common points beyond differences.