220916 | Geiger Septemberfest | Robert Machiri

Robert Machiri is a sound worker born in Harare. Previously based in Johannesburg he currently resides in Berlin. He is a hoarder of things and ideas inspired by a biographical recollection of music; an embodied source for sonic study and memory. His work exists at the interstice of two streams of practice; his curatorial concepts and art which are presented through embodied critique as learning-through-unlearning, interwoven by sound, music and image-making. His most notable project PUNGWE is an interdisciplinary project circling sound in Africa with related contemporary arts discourses and spaces.

https://listeningatpungwe.wordpress.com/

For several years, GEIGER have discussed with Berlin-based artist, researcher, and label manager Cedrik Fermont about collaborating on some of his projects. Following more than two decades of research in alternative electronic, experimental, and noise music in and from Asia and Africa, he recently published some compilations dedicated to this topic and several essays about electroacoustic, noise, and experimental music on these continents. With the release of the compilation CD ”Alternate African Reality – Electronic, electro acoustic and experimental from Africa and the diaspora” in 2020, we invited Cedrik to curate this festival together with us, with this CD as a starting point. The history of electronic and experimental music in Africa roughly started in the 1950s (with the notable exception of Halim El-Dabh in 1944) and today this music landscape is a rich and various one.