“If you forget your country drum  

you loose your countrymen“

Akan Proverb

Beyond the door of no return. Water. The open sea - the unkown. Looking out the crusty window, affected by a pinch of salt in the air. The pressure of humidity felt on the skin. Is it that we are looking into distant futures or pasts?

"If you forget" is a sound installation using multiple  layers of symbolism based on diaspora, heritage and colonialism. It  uses an Akan proverb and Korang's poem "rootless" as well as several drum instrumentations played by Jarita Freydank, to  create a space of relation between the African diaspora across the world.

The sound is coming from the shell. Listening to a shell is listening to its journey. The shell in itself is a body of sound, a drum, a relict from the past, that tells stories ready to be unraveled by its listener, who listens from their own context. The sonorous force of the sea reverberates within a shell - a sound that can be so calming and so violent at the same time, reminding of a distant past or present.

 

Audio essay

If you forget

© 2019