Kalunga Extended // Krypten

Kalunga Extended - a performance ritual installation The water archive. The earth archive. Systems of communication. Places of transition. States of becoming. Kalunga Extended is the third part of a performance trilogy developed by Luanda Carneiro Jacoel through nearly a decade of research. The two first parts, Kalunga Unspoken and Kalunga Entities, have been presented in Oslo, Malmö, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Lagos. The work is a meeting point for an interdisciplinary perspective: the performance meets rituals and avant-garde, linking elements of visual art, dance, text, music and social themes such as cultural background and post-colonialism. The performance is based on a communication between music, dance and installation that taking place in real time, creating dialogue and dramaturgy with a strong relevance between body, history, space and time. The series is inspired by the symbolism of the word "Kalunga", present in the Bakongo Cosmogram (Dikenga). “Kalunga” is a word from the Bantu languages (an ethno-linguistic group located mainly in sub-Saharan Africa) which means the sea, as well as the burial grounds. The Bakongo Cosmogram is a representation of a life path through the material and spiritual worlds – like the cycle of the sun. The Bakongo Cosmogram is present in many Afro-Brazilian traditions, where it is incorporated as a cosmovision. The performance concept seeks the meaning of the word “Kalunga” in our days, in relation to the transatlantic slavery history and the Afrodiaspora resulting from the journey across the sea. It is a new path inside of the history, the traces, the legacy of memory and the archives of this cosmovision that is still alive, despite the silence concerning the history of slavery. It is a claim to update our body–memory, that has been carrying those archives and expressing them in culture, symbols and ways of living, as a form of resistance and survival. Performance and concept: Luanda Carneiro Jacoel (BR/NO) Music: Ben LaMar Gay(US) Visuals and archive research: Temi Odumosu (NG/UK) Costume and objects: Kiyoshi Kiki Yamamoto (JP/BR/NO) Dramaturgy: Deise Nunes (BR/NO) External eye: Mia Haugland Habib (US/NO) Special Thanks to Koffi Koko Technical support: Studio Industries Supported by: Art Council Norway/ Kulturrådet & Oslo kommune