INTER(FEAR)ENCE, 2021
7-min, sound installation

INTER(FEAR)ENCE (2021), speaks to the hierarchical division sounded between whiteness and blackness, and on a deeper level, it speaks to the interactions between the powerful and the powerless.

Inspired by the notion that fear creates a sonic filter, which prevents us from recognizing our common humanity, this piece puts forward the idea that there is a transparent line of fear that divides black and white America. This division is both deep and systemic. This transparent filter symbolizes the ideological barriers that interferes with our listening. When we do not listen, we do not accept the humanity of the other.

This installation invites you to engage in two different perspectives and aims to explore how sound and listening impact racial politics. We hear anger, frustration, disbelief, fear, pride and humiliation. There is also condescension, domination, threats, impatience and violence.

Inspired by the African-American writer and intellectual , W.E.B. DuBois. In Dusk of Dawn, DuBois described the doggedness of race as an invisible color line kind of transparent wall dividing blacks and whites. On one side of this transparent wall is where blacks reside in a kind of vacuum. On the other side of the color line is where whites live. The transparent wall allows the two worlds to see each other, but words and sounds are unable to penetrate.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmhz6YNZEM&t=1s&ab_channel=Nexcyia
Sound: https://soundcloud.com/nexcyia/interfearence2021-final/s-zdigDgwOHuQ

INTER(FEAR)ENCE, 2023 at Murate Art District, Florence - Italy 

MAD Murate Art District in collaboration with the Black History Month Florence Cultural Association and The Recovery Plan are pleased to present the VIII Edition of Black History Month Florence – Sforzando .

In its seventh year of collaboration with MAD Murate Art District, the Memory Effect exhibition , curated by BHMF in collaboration with the students of the  IED Master in Curatorial Practice , takes shape in all the exhibition spaces of the complex from 2 February to 2 March 2023 .

Black History Month Florence – Sforzando  is the result of a collective organization that brings together associations, individuals and institutions, for the relaunch of a national and international reflection on the recovery of Black History.
The exhibition brings together the works of the four artists  Binta Diaw, Nexcyia, Bocar Niang and Lerato Shadi,  intertwining performances,  sound art  and installations.

In geology the  Memory effect (ME) is visualized as interferences and anomalies present in mappings and topographies; it is in fact produced by errors and imperfections generated by equipment and technologies used in data collection and graph creation.
Each of the works on display is created with a  site-specific approach  and extends the perception of the sound's ability to occupy space. Videos, textiles, soil and car parts form the backdrop to a series of nuanced conversations about documentation and memory as forms of resistance.

The opening of the exhibition is scheduled for Thursday 2 February at 5.30pm and will be accompanied by a dialogue with artists Binta Diaw, Bocar Niang and Justin Randolph Thompson from the BHMF curatorial collective.

Below are prototypes of INTER(FEAR)ENCE
Installed between 2016-2018 at UAL: London College of Communication
BA (Sound Arts)

The installation by Nexcyia (Adam Dove) displayed in the foyer of the Carcere Duro (Hard Prison), on the third floor, engages viewer's perceptions of the divisions and hierarchies that manifest themselves between those in power and those considered to be without power. Inspired by the idea that fear generates a sound filter, which prevents us from recognizing our common humanity, this work embodies the present yet invisible fears symbolized by law enforcement. The distance between the driver, on the inside of the car door, and the law enforcement agent or "authority", on the outside, becomes a transparent yet indelible division, altering our interpretation of the sound on either side. Nexcyia's ongoing research draws heavily from personal and public vernacular archives and sound becomes a medium for the unsettling of fixed perspectives and positions, rendering both present yet intangible.

This work is inspired by the African-American writer and intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. In Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois described the doggedness of race as an invisible color line, kind of a transparent wall dividing blacks and whites. On one side of this transparent wall is where blacks reside in a kind of vacuum. On the other side of the line is where whites live. The transparent wall allows the two worlds to see each other, but words and sounds are unable to penetrate. 

text: Justin Randolph Thompson
co-founder and director Black History Month Florence
https://www.murateartdistrict.it/en/memory-effect/