Likon’yor - Bete language (Nigeria)’
translates to English Language “there is a lot to be said”
A sonic intervention grounded in decolonial theory and African-centered and Indigenous epistemologies, Likon’yor explores ephemeral memorials and living archives as counter-sites of knowledge production. Drawing from the work of thinkers such as Achille Mbembe and the collective praxis of Chimurenga, the project interrogates colonial temporalities and epistemic hierarchies by transforming the oral, the transient, and the unseen into a shared, audible commons.
Focusing on oral traditions and its application to current realities, Likon’yor enacts an African Indigenous hermeneutics where sound and storytelling are treated as ontological acts rather than supplements to written history and the use of advanced interactive sonic technology similar to sampling. Inspired by Chimurenga’s commitment to collective memory, heritage here is understood as unfinished and continually re-authored. As Tricia Rose observes, hip-hop sampling operates as “a means of archival research, a process of musical and cultural archaeology” (Rose, 1994), a logic that informs the project’s sonic methodology.
Adam Haupt reminds us that decolonisation requires a process of “de-Hollywoodising,” noting that throughout the twentieth century, widely shared images, (sound) and symbols were filtered through concentrated cultural industries (Haupt, 2012, p.38; Benkler). Likon’yor responds by appropriating, rather than rejecting, technological infrastructures “capturing globalisation” and repurposing imperial strategies for decolonial ends (Haupt, 2012, p.40).
Within this framework, information “wants to be free” (Thomas, 2002; Haupt, 2012), circulating as an immaterial, electronic style; ephemeral, communal, and resistant to ownership. In contrast to colonial mass production, Likon’yor insists on peculiar and authentic shared experiences that refuse fixed labels, enabling communal memory making beyond dominant regimes of classification (Hebdige, 1979).
