In this performative reading, artist, writer and scholar Michael Salu opens up the cinema space for a meditation on listening to the polyphonous dimensions of earth – inhumane and human – and to the frequencies of colonial afterlives.
Listening to the Red Earth
2023—
This film was created to be presented alongside live readings from Michael Salu's book Red Earth, with additional live sound elements taken from the book.
In this performative reading, artist, writer and scholar Michael Salu opens up the cinema space for a meditation on listening to the polyphonous dimensions of earth – inhumane and human – and to the frequencies of colonial afterlives. Drawing from his recent literary work, Red Earth (2023), Salu coalesces sound, words, image and space into a multi-sensual choreography on selfhood, grief and loss meshing towards nonhuman perspectives.
Red Earth is an expansive text and the source material for Michael Salu's broader interdisciplinary artistic study, where machine learning is central to various processes to ask whether one can use computational translation to engage other knowledge systems.
Listening to the Red Earth was first performed at Gropius Bau Museum, Berlin, in October 2023 and since has been performed at the British Library, London and the Royal College of Art.
Cinematography: Michael Salu & Lee Tesche Digital design and sculpture: Michael Salu Editing: Michael Salu Music: Lee Tesche Sound design: Michael Salu
Images from the performance in the Gropius Bau cinema, Berlin. October 2023.
Exhibitions, Events & Publications
Gropius Bau Museum, Berlin. October 2023 Royal College of Art, London. December 2023 British Library, London. December 2023 Red Earth Book launch & Planetary Portals, Peckham Levels, London. December 2023.
Selected Projects
Both complete works and experiments, thinking never breaks stride. Check back in as we add more.