Who is Sven Kacirek?: interview
The Kenya Sessions CD review
In her blog Agnieszka Krzeminska speaks about her work and collaboration with Sven Kacirek:
When Sven asked me if i could create a website to document his undertaking in Kenya, i felt delighted and flattered in the first place. As i begun to think about what can i contribute to this project, what would be necessary and what could be really cool, i begun to feel a fever, the african fever. This phrase goes back to the polish writer and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski. He wrote several semi-documentary semi-poetic books about his experience of 40 years work in Africa. Kapuscinski’s most famous book is The Shadow of the Sun (german: Afrikanisches Fieber, polish: Heban) – it is really worth reading.
I am very interested in the internet culture and her influence on social practices on the one hand and on the individual self-conception on the other hand. So i find it most exciting to offer a platform to people, where there can test and reflect themselves and enhance their identity also.
The first ideas were about bringing the experiences, leanings and feelings of the journey to others – visitors of the website – who could not participate in the adventure, besides the obvious aspect of documentation. This works best by showing the particularities of the country, the music and the tradition, people and landscapes etc by using moving images. So i decided to shoot everyday some parts of the journey. From the video material good moments should be selected, cut and uploaded to the website every evening when possible. The film material will be shooted with a professional camera and can be used for further purposes later.
Barabara means ’street’ or ‘road’ in kisuaheli. We found it is the according word to describe the metaphysics part of the project. Going on the road between african and west european cultures, between different worlds of music and just being on the road from west to east of kenya.
In the course of time the ideas and concepts grew and grew. Now we have launched Barabara.FM in the first version, which is dedicated to document the process of Sven’s work, to show the experiences of all involved parties in the journey and to open up a dialog. I will shoot the sessions and meetings with the traditional musicians of Kenya and try to show their way of living and thinking as far as it will be possible.
We appreciate comments and suggestions and are always very interested in the opinion of the website visitors. In the 2nd or 3rd Phase the website will integrate the visitors input in a way, we have not decided yet. Maybe one of you will deliver the the idea.
Finally, what i’m thrilled about, is the fact, that all people we talked about the project get the african fever too. So we found many supporters for this project: people who want to publish the record, people who want to make a documentary on TV, others helped to make fliers and last but not least the very nice two from Goethe Institute Nairobi, Johannes and Marie do everything to prepare the travel at its best.
