Plant Stories | Anguezomo & Abeni

"Bio-Acoustic Stories: Mermaid Resonances from Astral to the Underworlds" In this session, artists Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro and Abeni Asante share their practices on para-ecology and echo-location strategies to re-imagine Black feminist histories of the Diaspora in resistance and resilience. Through medicinal plant-based herbalist knowledge, they navigate the world through trans-species communions, ocean bio-mythographies, forensic para-echo-logies, civil rights & refugee movements, and feminist African liberation movements. From story-telling, poetry and testimony, both artists archive sonic ancestral testimonies reflecting on works by Saidiya Hartman, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, colonial and radio sound archive recordings, and sonic works by Stevie Wonder and Drexciya to amplify the histories of anti-colonial women fighters. Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro and Abeni Asante share their collective interdisciplinary practice through herbalism, sonic and visual arts to archive historical events and create modes of re-modelling care work and ways of protest practice through anti-psychiatric methods.