PERFORMANCE OFFERINGS
The various performances below are the offerings made by all collaborators to the project,
and contribute to the final edited video piece 'Sound and Soil'
I am a Naro SAN healer and leader and my journey in life is to be a pathfinder and seeker of cures and remedies from plant and vibration frequencies, in this way I find not just a healing for myself and my generational trauma but for many others. As a healer I’ve traveled Africa and few other countries studying how to better diagnose illness correct and help where I can in life, I practice Ayuvedic way of making treatments as well as homeopathy and electromagnetic therapy but mostly I rely on my SAN mouth Bow therapy and how vibrations can harmonize a body or plant into a healing state. My life and journey as a San healer have taken me into many lives of others and the responsibility of telling their stories to help others. The intentional methods I use is the most important agreement I create between the people I serve, I work with the pace of the moon full moon, half moon and new moon to seek correct diagnoses. The Sound & Soil journey has been very important for me to have been part of such culture exchange project. We journeyed into a world where most only hears stories and see social media posts. This time I’m happy that I have seen something as beautiful as this project bring a diverse group of women together to remember cultures and mercies through the journey of mycelium. Sound & Soil has truly blessed the children of the soil Naro SAN and NAMA
Q7 Beckett
Assistant Professor of Digital Art & Design
Mount Holyoke College
In my work with Sound and Soil, I worked as a team with Jemima Kola to document the creative output of Sonya Rademeyer and Kagiso Kekana, the traditional step dance of the NAMA Group, and the conversations and stories of San, Sangoma, and Inyanga Healers. Full authorship remains with this community according to Indigenous Research Methodologies. In this supporting role, holding space for this work from behind my camera, I was able to listen. And in listening I found community. By telling our story to someone we enter into trust. And true community, the kind that we call home, requires the discovery of a story that is shared. My homeland of the Southern United States carries some parallels to the conversations held during our residency. It is a land scarred by the actions of our past - actions of great civil injustice and violence which carry implications for how we live today - but it is also home to a culture of deep care and intersecting identities. As we acknowledge this history of racial injustice and oppression we must continue to make a meaningful effort to repair this injustice through listening and through actions of care. In this project, we were able to directly acknowledge our histories, allowing nothing to pass in silence, to begin building a space for Community in the future. I am proud of this work and stand with this entire community as a family. With lots of love, Dixon
Marianna Dixon Williams