Nkisi is the electronic music project of artist Melika Ngombe Kolongo, where she explores her obsession with worldly rhythm and its psycho-acoustic properties. ‘I like to think that as musicians or sonic practitioners we work with energy, actually we move energy around. I am interested in movement and moving—the trance and how repetition and the relation between rhythm and melody can hold that trance. I am also very interested in what sound and music actually do to our bodies and psyche. Music as bodily endeavour and personal experience can disrupt representational illusions, as it allows the indescribable and unthinkable to exist.’--Nkisi

“In this series, I will explore trance inducing body-, acoustic- and optical rhythms through collaborative works, invited sonic performances and my own solo sonic presentation. I am interested in how we communicate through rhythm and the importance of also looking at traditional rhythm in their purposes. Through the explorations of rhythmic archetypes; we imagine how rhythm travels and has travelled and how these are entangled with each other across borders and space-time. The trance-inducing power obtained by pulsating frequencies has an effect on the brain-wave patterns of humans. Alike, non-human machinery or rhythmic sounds produced by non humans can also inspire trance-like states, and as a result give agency to the invisible realm. Specific projects will be presented where bodily, optical and acoustical stimulation play together to entrance the audience…”

“I am delighted to invite artists that propose sonic ideas and other cosmologies (Ways how we see the world and ourselves in the world) in conversations about sound and music as tools; while playing with tensions between entrainment and dissonance, intentionality and resonance (the impact of one vibration on another) and demanding raw and immediate emotional response from the audience… I am interested in observing how we behave and communicate within these altered states of consciousness while listening to rhythms. It is inside the womb we all experienced a steady rhythm for the first time: the beating of heart; the key to our trance-states might be hidden in there.”

This residency is one of three at OTO for UK-based artists/groups at a vital point in their creative development, thanks to the support of Jerwood Charitable Foundation.