After an initial invitation to visit the Kuikuro village of Ipatse and work with filmmaker Tamuka Kuikuro, I was awarded a British Council Residency to return to Xingu as Composer in residence with the Wauja Community.

These experiences lead to deep long-term collaborative projects with the Wauja community, the wider communities in the Xingu, and Krenak artist and activist Shirley Krenak.

Below you will find links to various projects:

(More to be added)

 

BBC Radio 4 Programme: Orchestra of the Rainforest:

Musical collaboration with Akari Waura: BBC Late Junction.

CD release of Wauja music by Anitgen Records:

Kamukuwaká VR – British Council Project with People’s Palace Projects – Queen Mary University, London.

 

For the sixteen Indigenous communities of the Xingu Territory in the Brazilian Amazon, Kamukuwaká is their most sacred heritage site. At this location, each new generation learned the beliefs, customs, and oral histories that constitute their expansive cosmovision.

In 2018, Kamukuwaká’s engravings were brutally vandalised. It was thought this ancestral knowledge was lost forever. In a ground-breaking project, the Wauja led an international network (including People’s Palace Projects (PPP), Factum Foundation (Spain)) to create a meticulous digital restoration, combining every existing photograph of the engravings with 3D scanned data from the vandalised cave. The result is a high-resolution 3D rendering that secures Kamukuwaká’s sacred engravings for future generations.

This project has developed a digital interface for new generations to explore the cave of Kamukuwaká, enabling the Wauja Indigenous Community (Tulukai/AIT) to preserve and share the sacred knowledge once held by millennium-old rock art.

However, the data is only accessible to those with specialist equipment. PPP is working on the development of a VR interface for the Wauja Community (600 people) with British Council funding. This SPACE proposal will ensure online access for all of Xingu’s 16 communities (6,900 people) and for audiences in the UK and beyond.

The project so far:

Kamukuwaká VR Film:  

In close collaboration with filmmaker Piratá Waura, we are now developing a mixed reality version of Kamukuwaká for a wider audience, as part of Copenhagen Documentary Festivals CPH:LAB 6 month development programme.

CPH:LAB: https://cphdox.dk/cphlab-project/the-sacred-cave-of-kamukuwaka/

 

Piratá Wauja Films Links: (to follow)

Krenak Ancestral Healing Sound and Listening Sessions. (Goldsmiths, Cafe Oto, Baltic Arts & Cop26 – 2021)

Shirley Krenak is an indigenous woman of Brazil. She belongs to the Krenak people, a native group of the state of Minas Gerais. She has been working on many areas related to

the native culture since she was 13 years old. Alongside her brothers, she fights for land rights, ancestry rights and against the violence of the State in opposition to indigenous

people.

In these sessions the objective is to present aspects of the Krenak culture and its direct intersection with healing processes via indigenous ancestry. Listening is the possibility of expanding our conceptual capabilities and understanding the multiple relationships in which we are embedded. This involves humans and other-than-humans in amerindian philosophies, which the sessions demonstrate through Shirley’s experience of amerindian chants and sounds (all from the Krenak culture). The ultimate goal is to provide an experiment with possible worlds through listening, realising how amerindian peoples understand and practice their relationships with many entities.

In 2017 Nathaniel met Shirley Djukurnã Krenak, and their shared passion for sound set the scene for a future dialogue, which is now unfolding around these sessions. All sounds recorded by Shirley Krenak Mixed in Binaural Audio by Nathaniel, under Shirley’s direction.

Listening Link: https://bit.ly/3cifJGl