A further edition of our ZUSPIEL series presents an installation by Robert Lippok in cooperation with the eLand Workshop. Robert Lippok was invited by Italian architect Matteo Ferroni to develop an audio work for the project “Foroba Yelen” run by the eLand Workshop in the Segou region in Mali, and to this purpose visited some of the villages there. “Foroba Yelen” – meaning something like “Community Lights” – comprises mobile LED lamps that were made from partially recycled material by local craftsmen and take light into villages that have no electricity network. The lighting is therefore not a fixed installation but can be transported to suitable venues for social activities and interactions. As in other works, Robert Lippok has focused on special aspects reflecting local conditions. For example, he noticed the heterogeneous refuse that gathers on the fields all around the mud-built villages, consisting mainly of plastic bags but also of a whole range of civilisation’s refuse. All these objects are, like Foroba Yelen, collective in a certain sense, although they do not “belong” to anyone. In the installation “by the Niger river” in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Robert Lippok combines two of the Foroba Yelen lamps from Segou with sound recordings made on the spot of conversations with villagers, sequences from musical compositions, texts and found objects, thus creating a fragmentary picture of everyday life in a rural region of Mali.

Special thanks are due to the eLand Workshop, Nadlec Lighting, Allesanne Dimbo Keita, the inhabitants of the village Sanogola, and Matteo Ferroni.

Robert Lippok is a Berlin-based artist, musician and founder of the band To Rococo Rot. The eLand Workshop is a platform for studies on culture and territory established by Matteo Feroni.