Maroua, Honey, Mythology. Or the mythopoetics of going back to ones roots

Cameroonian painter, sculptor and performance artist Alioum Moussa takes us on a journey in this episode of „Die Erde spricht / The Earth is Sepaking“. An acoustic journey from his home in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, to Maroua, his birthplace in the far north of the country – and on a journey to the foundations of his poetics. Why make art? For whom? And from what? Questions that – as Alioum Moussa’s sound art essay makes clear – cannot be separated if art is to be meaningful. „Mythopoetic“ – that’s what Alioum Moussa calls the approach of his art. It consists in drawing energy for his own work from myths and mythically charged materials such as beeswax, honey or soil that are meaningful to him and the people around him. An approach that Joseph Beuys also advocated and that seems to be becoming increasingly important in Africa, at least in Cameroon.