Contributions

Umnikelo emerges through shared thought, presence, and listening.

The conceptual provocation “listening while black” was developed in dialogue with Naledi Chai, whose reflections anchor the work’s sonic and philosophical orientation.

Mrs James appears as co-narrator and central presence. Her gardening practice, domestic rhythms, and spiritual rituals shape the work’s cosmological and ethical grounding. The soundscape is composed of embodied field recordings gathered in eGcibhala and the Ngumla home, carried by family life, labour, and everyday movement. Amaculo ase caweni heard throughout the piece are a composite of multiple church assemblies attended in Port St John’s, forming the work’s musical and spiritual foundation.

With Guest: Siviwe James is a researcher, multidisciplinary artist, and archivist whose work explores memory, listening, and everyday life as sites of knowledge. Working with personal and public archives, interviews, and field recordings, she brings together text, image, sound, and moving image to create new conversations between past and present, grounded in Xhosa life and ways of knowing.

Her practice is interested in how histories are held, carried, and returned to through care, ritual, and relation rather than extraction. Through sonic work, writing, and visual research, James develops polyvocal forms that centre lived experience and communal knowledge.

Her work has been presented at Art After Baby (2025), the Global Fashioning Assembly (2024), the State of Fashion – Ways of Caring Biennale (2022), and Design Future Labs (2022), and featured in MOYA Magazine and PARSE Journal. She is the creator of the podcast UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa, a sonic archive exploring Xhosa aesthetics, memory, and the fold, featured on The Academic Citizen.