Forensis is a nonprofit research association which investigates – or counter-investigates – violence and repression committed by state and corporate actors around the world. They collaborate with artist, designer, and musician Bill Kouligas and his adored label PAN on The Drum and the Bird: a multi-sensory performance which takes as its subject Forensis’s ongoing investigation into German colonialism in Namibia. Examining the relationship between lost ecologies and colonial exploitation, The Drum and the Bird combines generative environmental audio, oral testimonies, and spatio-visual modelling to highlight the voices and sounds that have been erased in the wake of rampant coloniality. Looking beyond the human world for answers, the piece pays tribute to the histories and changes witnessed and experienced by the flora, fauna, and geology of the Namibian landscape. What forms of loss do these environmental characters carry within them? Prior to their performance at the Koninklijke Schouwburg, Celina Abba, Mark Mushiba, and Tobechukwu Onwukeme (of Forensis) will enter into a conversation with Giada Dalla Bontà about their immersive audio-visual collaboration, discussing how the work unsettles colonial amnesia by bearing witness to dormant, overlooked ecologies, the role of noise, and the ways in which they attune to and make audible testimonies of loss. 

Giada Dalla Bontà is an Italian researcher, curator, and writer exploring the intersections of sound, art, and politics. Based in Berlin and Copenhagen, she works as a PhD fellow at KU Sound Studies Lab, focusing on experimental and underground practices in the EECCA region from the late soviet era to the present day.