Who's Calling Can You Hear?
How can the study of wild chimpanzees prompt us to rethink our connection with the natural world around us?
Camera traps in Nimba, Guinea, documented chimpanzees drumming to communicate with each other. Focusing on these acoustic artefacts, artist Nikki Buzzi offered us a way to understand humans, non-humans, and our environment—all fundamentally connected by carbon.
Supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, New Delhi.
Medium: Camera trap recordings, Field recordings, Synthesised sound
Year: 2022
Process
A chimpanzee captured using a camera trap in Nimba, Guinea, 2020.
An adult and infant chimpanzee captured using a camera trap in Nimba, Guinea, 2021.
Primatologist Kathelijen Koops in the mountains of Nimba, Guinea.
Team
Nikki Buzzi
Composer
Nikki Buzzi is a composer, performer and sound artist based in Zurich, Switzerland and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Their work spans various fields including music, installation art, media art, performing arts, film and education. They hold an MA in Electroacoustic Composition and currently act as Technical Director of the Studio for Electronic Music and Acoustics at the HfMDK Frankfurt. Buzzi focuses on the potential of appropriation and the use of advanced technological knowledge to negotiate and disarm historical ballast of cultural practices that are rooted in the timelines of European art music. Their solo and collaborative practice produces artefacts that are often site-specific, performance-oriented, and closely related to acoustic phenomena and perception mechanisms.
