“Chosi Chosi”

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

A unique video mapping on the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris inspired by the iintsomi (African folk tales) for the Newmages Festival 2021.
Gather around the digital fire and share in stories that weave worlds together. Travel across time and space, maps and galaxies as you craft the new iintsomi and discover the spirit of Ubuntu – I am, because you are.

Original creation by
Xabiso Vili – spoken word and poem
Inka Kendzia – director, visualization, 2D animation, compositing, projection art, creative producer
Jason Stapleton – 3D, lidar scan, point cloud data processing
Elise Wessels – illustration, frame by frame animation
Faith XLVII – additional artwork

2021, video mapping (ZA)

Chosi Chosi is not only a way of saying „once upon a time“, but also a respectful commanding of attention as the storyteller prepares to share age-old knowledge in the form of iintsomi. Iintsomi are folk tales that have been passed down across time, not only are they told to children around a fire or as bedtime stories, but they also act as a form of archiving history. Using metaphors and magical language, these stories become historical and spiritual text.

Some folktales state that is is through the stories we tell that we create the world around us, stories are the spells we weave into the fabric to keep it alive. In this projection mapping, we seek to create new stories, we are working towards future archiving, this is the new iintsomi.

Using 2D and 3D animations, we use the poetry to span across time, blurring the boundaries between past, future and present. We distort space, re-imagining maps and migration on earth and across galaxies. Like fires and traditional masks used to be a means to speak and connect to our ancestors, we take these elements and use the digital layer as a new spiritual plane to communicate our history and our collective futures.
Projection mapping becomes the digital fire we can all sit around to share iintsomi, it offers us a reminder as to just how connected we all are, it is a reminder of the spirit of ubuntu – umntu ngumntu ngabantu – a person is made a person by other people or, I am because you are.