[20-23/06/2024]

Bodies of Knowledge for Curating Contemporary Art 2024, held at Royal College of Art, London.

Photos by the Chris Lee, Barney Pau, & Isabelle Enquist.

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Accompanying text by Barney Pau.

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Exhibition copy:

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"Who holds the agency to share knowledge in a transnational context?
Does this knowledge claim its own agency?

Bodies of Knowledge foregrounds the embodied knowledge that exists beyond, and in spite of, traditionally eurocentric ways of knowing. The practices of Bint Mbareh and Barney Pau converge for the first time in an installation that invites each participating body to vocalise what it knows, manifesting its knowledge of ritual, oral history, and language into shared space. An interactive moment of exchange allows the embodied to assert its own validity, making way for an individualised experience of knowledge beyond conventional boundaries.

Between June 19th and 24th, 2024, the Bodies of Knowledge exhibition featured tanks hosting ferments prepared by Barney Pau, which were in dialogue with a sonic piece created by Bint Mbareh — and built upon by every visitor. An observant colony of ferments reacted in real time to the visiting voices, reverberating its response back to the viewer.

The sonic stimuli were based on sounds produced in the choir workshop "Mouthful of Voice" on May 29, 2024. We owe immense gratitude to the 15 co-creators who lent their voices to this project.​"