Until the 19th century, in Western science, "melancholia" was seen and described to have physical symptoms as well as mental. The melancholic conditions were classified as such by their perceived common cause - an excess of black bile. At times, all forms of mental illness were associated with the concept, with some deemed to be caused by a combination of excess black bile and a disorder of one of the other humors.

The focus of Gugulethu Duma’s curatorial contributions to Oyoun’s Embodied Arts Festival invites contemplations on melancholia, psycho-spiritual instability and the colour black. Black as silence; black as emptiness; black as the unknown; black as the shadow; black as the night, as we move with an earth still in a global lockdown.

The work of Saidiyah Hartman asks us: what if depression could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, exclusion, everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to biochemical imbalances? How can we feel, deal and heal while the experiences of loss and alienation persist? The silent victims are countless, and their names remain unrecorded. The body carries this reality and functions. Day in and day out. The body functions in a dysfunctional state, we can hear, but do we listen? We can look, but do we observe?

The Black Post Box invites individuals to have a conversation with all that’s gone unrecorded, and to post the reflections in the post box after engaging with the installation.

There is a global feeling of being suspended in mid-air - and a diaspora rhythm where displacement is another way of describing home.

The Black Post Box is an audio-visual space for individuals to enter and communicate with an audio-visual entity. This entity invites you to observe the observable and listen to what has been silenced.

Information about the opening times and locations will be available soon: see oyoun.de

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Ayanda Duma is a video and film artist whose main objective is the re-representation of the marginalised people of South Africa. Through a subversive and an imaginative lens, her work encompasses an inquiry into the ways the past informs the present, reflecting on how this affects the representation of the South African & global youth. Ayanda Duma’s film work embodies themes such as identity, sexuality, interpersonal relationships and politics within slice of life narratives that celebrate the magic in the mundane. She is an emerging female-identifying filmmaker from East London, currently based in Cape Town. Ever the curious artist, her creative inclinations, beginning in primary school, have spanned many years covering a range from classical piano, music composition, modelling, performance and visual storytelling in the forms of portrait photography and filmmaking. Her filmmaking journey began with Film School in 2016 and by 2017 my short film, Booked, was shortlisted for The Horizon Award with The Creative Mind Group. This accolade earned me an invitation and internship at the Cannes Film Festival 2018.

Dylan Hunter Chee Greene is a Chinese-American drummer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer. Driven to make a diverse and mixed body of work, Dylan writes music as a session player and a commissioned composer. His music for dance, concert, and visual art installations have been heard across the United States at Alvin Ailey, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, MoCAD, and the Mark Morris Dance Center. He has played at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Roulette Intermedium, National Sawdust, The Isabella Stewart Gardener, and The Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall. Dylan spans multiple genres and mediums, leading him to perform and create with elders such as Shahzad Ismaily, Sō Percussion, Leila Adu, Mark Stuart, David Scher and Jeff Dolven. As a member of Oracle Hysterical, he regularly works with some of his closest mentors, Elliot Cole, Doug and Brad Balliett, and Majel Connery. Greene has gone on to perform with Grammy nominated artists, A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, Bessie Award winning choreographers, Rebecca Lazier and Christopher Williams, MacArthur Fellowship composer, Matt Aucoin, and the Peabody Award winning podcast, Radiolab. Dylan has been an artist in residency at Avaloch, a fellow at Mass MOCA with Bang On a CAN, and a Onebeat alumni, an initiative of Found Sound Nation supported by the U.S. Department of State. He teaches a trauma conscious music methodology with Music Beyond Measure and is an ambassador for Out Of Time Embassy, a Berlin based collective. > hunterchee.com

"As an artist, I believe in prismatic visions and cycles. It's by overlapping these visions, or looking from all angles, and by repeating a similar sound, or a complex process, that I work. I feel into mediums with the terms and ideas of another in order to find the poetry in the spaces between. For my health, I meditate on color, noise, and rhythm, and that nurtures my connections. I hope, that beyond all, the art that I make will offer those who experience it the space to cry or dance or both." - Dylan Hunter Chee Greene

Gugulethu Duma, also known as Dumama, is an artist, performer and sonic researcher, born in South Africa. Her transdisciplinary practice involves consciously deconstructing and critiquing archaic modes of representation of (Southern) African sonic and performance culture. Her interests intersect as practice based performance research, and interdisciplinary, collaborative bodies of work centred around political-poetic imaginations. > dumamamusic.com

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This event is part of Oyoun's EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVA: Curators, artists and cultural practitioners have been exploring identities, belonging and embodied memories through diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives as part of Oyoun’s first curatorial focus: EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES. The outcomes, encounters and queries will be presented and celebrated during the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL from 8th - 18th April: https://oyoun.de/unsere-arbeit/embodied/