Ife and Bilal: Reflections on an Afro-Asian intercultural, practice-based intervention

Abstract

This article reflects on an artistic production created between 2017 and 2018 as part of a Mellonfunded, inter-institutional research  project titled: ‘Re-centring AfroAsia: Musical and human migrations in the pre-colonial period 700-1500 AD’ (University of Cape Town,  University of the Western Cape, University of the Witwatersrand, Ambedkar University Delhi). The production, titled Ife and Bilal, was an  intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration between artists from South Africa, India, and Turkey. As an exploration in grounding  contemporary creative and scholarly inquiries outside of Eurocentric discourse, it explored ancient oceanic connections through a live, improvised performance of sound and visuals. In the interconnected world of the Indian Ocean a thousand years ago, water was the  conduit that carried people, ideas, and sounds between Africa and Asia. The story of Ife and Bilal revisited that world, where journeys  were unpredictable and at the mercy of the forces of nature. Knowledge, collaboration and improvisation were key to survival. The theatrical production embraced these elements, moving away from the literal and towards themes from the littoral, using historically  informed media in experimental ways to convey a narrative. Resisting nostalgic or stereotypical representations of a past, the authors  drew inspiration from tenth-century Arabic, African and other contemporaneous enquiries into astronomy, astrology, optics, geometry  and alchemy. The performed and projected visual art elements explored the material aspects of water, sound, metal and light. Here,  science and art worked together with music to locate unseen currents within these historical moments and narratives of fate and fortune.  In this article, we reflect on the experimental process of creating Ife and Bilal as artist-researchers, situating our practise within  a broader decolonial epistemological project.