Kush Yard Totem, Octavian Graphic Score 1 11

The sound accompanying the artwork is available by clicking on the player above.

The musician, composer and visual artist Satch Hoyt has created three versions of an installation for the Blickachsen 12 venues in Bad Homburg, Eschborn and Frankfurt. In his musical and visual works, Hoyt reflects the cultural history of the transnational African diaspora. In doing so, he seeks to break open entrenched ways of thinking. His sculptures and installations often have a musical connection. Thus his series of works “Kush Yard Totem” is, according to the artist, inspired by an old sound recording from Ethiopia of the syncopated chanting of nomadic people drawing water from a well. In the Bad Homburg Kurpark, Hoyt has placed eight pillar-shaped “totems” around an injured copper beech that has been fenced in. They are formed out of plastic buckets in the colours of the Pan-African movement, and symbolically represent containers for the elixir of life, water. Four monochromatic red totems here reflect the leaves of the blood-red beech – and their positioning by the artist behind the fence serves to provide an additional range of meanings. Hoyt’s accompanying sonic text can be called up at the site via QR code or on www.blickachsen.com – together with two companion lyrical texts by Jordane Maurs.