Artist residency @ Espace Kangou
Based in Brazzaville, Congo-Brazzaville, Espace Kangou is the home and working space of La Compagnie Kangou, a percussion, dance and performance company rooted in the Ngwakatour tradition of the Ba Congo people, one of Central Africa's most extraordinary and least known musical heritages.
We invite performers, visual artists, filmmakers and writers to come and work alongside us. We are interested in encounter — in what emerges when different artistic languages meet, collide, create something neither could have made alone.
Espace Kangou offers residencies for artists who want to work from the inside of a living tradition rather than observe it from the outside.
The Ngwakatour tradition is rooted in the living ecosystem of the Congo basin, one of the world's most critical and most threatened environments.
Our practice has worked with found and reused materials since the beginning.
We do not start with "ritual". An object becomes thrash when it cannot speak any more. We re-cover the speaking power of an object. We regain the conditions for an object to speak. We end with "ritual", when objects can tell their story, their wishes, their desires and when they reinstate their point of view.
We are interested to work with artists who think about ecology not as subject matter but as condition of existence.
The most radical thing we do: ask people to unknow what they were taught, before they can learn something new from within, by practice.
This is not metaphor, it is a physical process, experienced in the body, that cannot be rushed or intellectualised.
It is also, we believe, the central challenge of any genuine intercultural encounter.
It is one of the most powerful counter-colonial methodologies available to artists today.
What we are working on
We are futurists, and we are rooted.
The Ngwakatour is one of the oldest percussion tradition in Central Africa. The Ngwakatour survived centuries not by preserving themselves but by transforming — absorbing new realities, moving between communities, reinventing their rhythms without losing their roots.
Na Vumbuka is proof that tradition and contemporaneity are not opposites.
The children of our ngoma school are not learning a museum piece. They are learning a living language they will carry somewhere nobody can predict yet.
The body, unlearning, relearning
Environment
Futures
Our work moves across three territories that we believe inseparable
Residents have access to our performance and rehearsal space, our instruments, our community, and the daily life of a working artistic household in one of Central Africa's most vibrant cities. Professional recording and video production equipment is available for use during the residency.
Residents are expected to source their own funding and accommodation. L'Espace Kangou is centrally located, and a hotel is located ten metres from our door. We provide the artistic environment, the community, and the collaboration.
We ask that you bring eagerness, enthusiasm, ideas, and a willingness to expand, and also something for our community — a public sharing of work made during the stay, presented at Espace Kangou before departure.
To apply or enquire: info@lacompagniekangou.com
Ya Kangou
Founder / Lead Artist
Ma Kangou
Whilst relearning
