First, some music for you:
The clip above was created by interdisciplinary artist Lamine Sonko. I interviewed Lamine and his producer, Olive Moynihan, for my book, Near and Far, last year. We had a profound conversation; I thought that - just for this week - I would take a break from creative prompts and share an excerpt from Near and Far featuring some of our discussion.
Just a reminder: I have a free online event coming up next week in which I discuss what I found out during the writing of Near and Far. Book here if you are curious about how artists enrich, challenge, and affect the projects and teams they work with?
Meredith: I didn't know until you just told me that in Senegalese culture, the arts have a place. It is embedded within community, whereas here we do tend to talk about the arts as if it's this separate thing and creativity as something out there, some exotic thing that people have to go and find or buy or learn instead of something that might flow with our actual human nature.
I noticed that on The Knowing Project website you have a news section with a lot of really great articles. I thought that the articles were providing proof, and I thought, okay, if I was somebody who worked for council or for a business or a school, and I was thinking, will I bring these people into our institution, I could read those articles and be convinced. So, those articles make a really strong case, and I was curious about that because I find marketing what I do really hard - how to translate that creative thing I do into language that people out there can understand. So, I think your website does a great job with that.
But it was interesting to me that you had to do it in the first place. To me it's obvious what the riches and benefits you bring are, but for other people out there, you have to make a case.
Logan Timmins told me that Amble Studio had to do something similar:
“It has been tough. Especially in the early days, we did a lot of market education with articles and education.”
On the one hand, this is a nifty strategy that Olive, Lamine, and Amble Studio are using here to educate their market. On the other, I really do find it interesting that proofs need to be produced. I make the point elsewhere in Near and Far that there is resistance to the arts from other sectors.
Olive: That's because our society does separate the arts out as some kind of thing that you go and learn if you can, if you can afford to, or if you want to. Whereas in a culture like Senegal and many other non-Western cultures, the arts are important in that they’re integrated into life, they're the vehicle for different parts of life, whether it's birth or death or all the things in between. And so, it's not something you choose to do. Everyone kind of just does it. Some people become specialists at it, but everyone does it in some form because it's integrated into everyday life through ceremony and traditions.
Lamine: Yes, it is more like allowing each individual to communicate verbally and non-verbally as well. So, accepting that people have different ways of communicating themselves, I guess in Senegal art does that. If you want to communicate a certain idea in a multi-level way, art would allow you to do so and you have access to that from a very young age, knowing that you can follow one path of how society defines who you are, or you can also follow other ways to dive into a spiritual journey, or a more multidimensional way of expressing who you are through the arts. So, I guess having that access from a very young age allows you to be creative, it also allows you to visualize things before they arrive, and also allows you to know how to navigate yourself and also within different cultures in everyday life.
What Olive and Lamine are describing here seems to transcend any need to consider the arts as a transversal process or to think about collaboration as inter- or trans-disciplinary. If the arts are embedded holistically within life, then how can they be separated out and sequestered as a ‘special’ luxury’ or, alternatively, as a needless indulgence?
Meredith: That's awesome. That's putting it just beautifully. And I especially love that sense of navigating yourself as well. I often talk about wayfinding between your inner self and the outside material world.
Lamine: That's right.
Meredith: And the fact that you draw on this… I want to call it tradition, but it's more than that. Again, in Western culture, we often talk about tradition as if it's something historical and old, and then innovation as if it's something that happens now and into the future. And when I looked at the 13.12 website, I thought, okay, this is telling me very effectively that the arts practice here is embedded in ancient tradition. But I was struck by the notion that it's also an innovative practice. I could see how you were composing contemporary pieces where you are taking this very fresh, very adaptable view of how you manifest those ancient traditions. And I thought, why am I thinking about tradition and innovation as if they're two separate things? Maybe you are working within a tradition of innovation. You know?
Lamine: It took us a while. Like we had the experience of having our own 10-piece band before called the African Intelligence and working with that. And we then created The Knowing Project. Then we thought, how can we bring this ancient knowledge system that is not just used as an artistic practice but in everyday life and bring it into our everyday art practice and see how we can create a platform or dialogue between different artists from different genres. You know?
If you want to read another excerpt from Near and Far
And if you love that, then you can buy a copy here.
Or you could become a paid subscriber to this Substack. I am serialising my published works for paid subscribers and also offering them a copy of each whole work for no additional cost.
Otherwise
I will see you in a fortnight with another creative prompt (unless I see you at my event next week?).