“Mitchener’s passions are deeply personal but also resonate with a broader community of artists, curators, writers and researchers who, through sonic and listening strategies, grapple with the question of what it means to pay attention in a world where this capacity is increasingly under threat.”
on third spaces, the limits of language and dismantling the notion that black artistic expression is linear and in the distance.
We caught up with Mitchener in advance of the event to talk about her curatorial perspective.
” (…) it is both the epitome of a solo record and somehow simultaneously its undoing.”
“(…) this is the aural equivalent of gazing into a crystal-clear night sky.”
“It’s mischievous, transformative material that helps bring lively, confounding poetry into new dimensions. Anyone who’s interested in all the many forms of sound poetry will find a huge amount of inspiration right here.”
An uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths.
Otoroku DL/LP
“unknown tongue” might be the most impressive piece of all. Multitracking her vocals, she conjures up a drama of communication beyond language: her two characters seem to meet, argue, scheme, get frustrated, hit an impasse, muddle through, and finally begin to play and harmonise with each other.
“The evening culminated in Mitchener bringing together all the night’s musicians and all of them wheeling into free jazz reaching a crescendo from Mitchener that shook Oto’s golden ceiling filaments and had its audience screaming in delight. Powerful, indelible, of an ilk no stranger to Oto regulars, but utterly mesmerising and original and even disturbing for any crossing its threshold for the first time.”
