Introduction to swell of spæc(i)es

Josèfa Ntjam’s artistic practice forges new myths and science fiction narratives that carry forward African and Afro-diasporic oral histories, knowledge systems and resistance movements. She fuses these stories with micro and macro-scale observations of the universe, from the resilience of tiny organisms to dark matter, forming speculative worlds rife with new alliances. Vivid, poetic and intricately layered, her works span moving image, photomontage, sculpture, text and performance. They are characterised by strong senses of movement, transformation and interconnection.

Ntjam’s installation swell of spæc(i)es is an otherworldly environment animated by the cosmic landscapes of a cyclical film and the interplay of sound, voice and vibration diffused from marine-like sculptures. It unfolds a “futuristic ancestrality” — a new creation story shaped by ancient and emergent ways of conceiving the world(s).

The project roots itself in Ntjam’s research into water as a container of many histories and mythologies, from colonial domination and extraction to narratives of emancipation and resistance. She sees these as intertwined, owing to the fact that the geographical spread of many stories implies movement linked to slavery, migration and displacement.

“swell of spæc(i)es is an alchemical process in perpetual agitation, the alloying of ancestral geneses with new image creation technologies.”

— Josèfa Ntjam

For swell of spæc(i)es, Ntjam explored links between oceans and outer space, both mythologically and scientifically. One point of departure for the project was the recent identification of limestone — a type of rock primarily formed through the sedimentation of the skeletons of plankton and other marine organisms — in the debris of a former planet orbiting a white dwarf. Ntjam keyed in on plankton, an organism defined by its migration on currents, as a speculative point of convergence between Earth and space. Her narrative approaches plankton as an apt carrier of memory across these realms.

In the cyclical film, memories of colonial resistance are embedded within various types of plankton. These hybrid creatures morph between different life phases and processes: they are seen forming radiant stars in reference to a chemical process called bioluminescence, creating shields of mucus and hardening into shells, fossils and limestone. Their transformations become a connecting thread in weaving characters and plot points drawn from Dogon and Huaorani creation stories into an expansive new myth.

To give form to this cosmos, Ntjam used artificial intelligence (AI) image generation and digital blending tools to visually synthesise the vast range of connections she draws. Like myths, generative AI is iterative: it generates endless versions from the same core elements. Ntjam uses the technology to visualise emergent relationships, and to enable figures and stories to continue to transform. For example, she describes the generation of new avatars of West African sculptures as a gesture to “free” these statues from the weight of colonial occupation and theft that often conditioned entry into Western collections. They leap from being an object to a speculative entity, re-entering the realm of myth.

Ntjam's amalgamation and transformation of disparate stories is aimed at centering possibilities for relation outside of imposed ideas about origin and identity. Her worldbuilding is resolutely alter-futurist. This concept, conceived by Mawena Yehouessi, reclaims the abundance of prospective imaginaries beyond the gaze of Western historical developments, desires and categorisations. Ntjam looks to myth as a powerful way of shaping this futurity. She conceived swell of spæc(i)es as a “non-origin of species.” This idea brushes against both the linearity and classifications often associated with an origin. It invokes endless cycles of transformation and renewal; a snake eating its tail. Surging a “swell” of species, spaces and stories, the project contends with a universe in continual expansion — a creation story without end.

“What is a myth? A story that is told to many and that metamorphoses according to each other’s contributions and blind spots. Yet a story so vast and malleable, at the same time blazing and loose, that we can project ourselves, inhabit and haunt it together, anarchically.”

— Mawena Yehouessi

Poem by Mawena Yehouessi

One's only hope, in a time of decay, is to become
a snake. Not to take on trust or understand it
somehow but to become a snake.
An all-encompassing experience of flight,
or a jug as Fred Moten speaks about blackness.

For the cycle thing is everything and beyond
anything that shapeshifts to be part of the worlds:
Nahash is a djinn like our Aqueous Mother is the
sin of such knowledge you cannot know; unless
you agree to lose skin and (get) involve(d) as a
remnant, in turn.

Yes, they are worlds.

Like the frolic vibration of a [decolonial] matter of
quarks that are drifting; drafting anew whatever
would resonate and expand. Jamming.

— Mawena Yehouessi

Cyclical Film

Blending 3D animation with footage from aquariums, the film is a circular narrative of transformation and resurgence. Its mythology is based on two creation stories: the Dogon myth of Amma, a deity who created the stars by launching pellets of earth into the sky, and Nommo, twin water spirits; and a Huaorani tale about a snake that eats the stars to make the first vegetation, waterways and marine life. In Ntjam’s version, Amma casts limestone into space, breaking the rock into asteroids and luminous plankton stars that emit light through a chemical process known as bioluminescence. The stars are devoured by an astral snake, and harden into fossils in its belly. From the snake’s mouth emerges a fossil planet, where Nommo create the planet’s marine life, including an octopus that transforms into Amma, beginning the narrative anew.

Each character represents a blend of different species and memories, and has been synthesised using AI and other digital tools. Sources include 3D models of marine life, images of West African statues held in Western collections, and photographs of figures within liberation movements, such as Elisabeth Djouka, Marthe Ekemeyong Moumie and Ntjam’s grandfather, who each fought against French colonial troops as part of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC). France’s colonial massacres in Cameroon were widely erased from Western archives and narratives, and a document declassification process began only in 2022. Ntjam has repeatedly included these photographs in her work as a form of persistent testimony, often seen collaged in caves, water bubbles, membranes and celestial bodies. This approach of embedding contested histories in landscapes and organisms is influenced by Drexciya, an electronic music duo whose mythology tells of an underwater population born out of the wrecks of the Atlantic human trade, and composer Sun Ra, who envisioned Saturn as a host planet for Afro-diasporic people.

The film is displayed on a curved LED screen whose image reflects on a polished black surface below it, creating a mirror effect and a sense of depth. Fatima Al Qadiri composed the film’s rich soundscape, which fluidly combines melodic motifs with atmospheric music. Mixing acoustic harp and cello with digital instruments such as flute and oboe, it combines ethereal sounds with deep, visceral registers. The score’s cinematic atmospherics give strong spatial and emotive dimensions to the film’s journey through the void of outer space and the abyss of the deep sea, while its captivating melodies give voice to the film’s protagonists.

“In this dis-continuous world, space and oceans come together to create what we might call heterotopia, a mole fraction that reveals memories and futuristic ancestrality.”

— Josèfa Ntjam

Sonic Sculptures

Within the swell of spæc(i)es environment, radiant, marine-like sculptures are agents of sonic transmission and reception, creating a dynamic play of rhythms, voices and resonances. Ntjam approaches sound, frequencies and vibration as a means of opening speculative and spectral connections. Voice is equally significant as the form through which myths and histories have spread and evolved over the course of centuries. Ntjam’s sculptures are made from innovative materials including biosourced sunflower seed resin, hemp and hay.

Two jellyfish-shaped sound showers are suspended in the installation. A voice emerges from a central pearl contained within each sculpture, introducing a first-person narrator whose “I” is multiple and ever-shifting. They poetically channel the film’s mythology through the flow of a personal chronicle interwoven with reflections on the interconnectedness of life and the cosmos, and endless cycles of transformation and renewal. The sculptures’ form is based on a floating robotic jellyfish appearing in the opening scene of Sun Ra and John Coney’s 1974 film Space Is the Place.

A vibrant, membrane-like layer emerges from the ground, resembling a large alien egg or embryo. Membranes are a motif in Ntjam’s work, often seen cradling images of revolutionary figures, insisting on the preservation of their memories. Ntjam refers to them as an archive, one that will continue to live in our surroundings, adapt and transform into new life. The membrane in the installation cradles visitors, forming a private space to rest and inhabit the emergent worlds Ntjam has forged. At times during the film’s cycle, the shiny, resonant surface of its interior cavity opens up new colour and sound spectrums. It’s like a portal to another plane: a world beyond. The membrane's sound is composed by Hugo Mir-Valette, who blended layers from recordings with analogue and digital tones to create music based on fractal patterns. Its open structure invites visitors to listen based on their individual associations. The frequencies of MirValette’s composition are diffused across the inner surface of the membrane through small devices called sound exciters, enabling their vibrations to transform the womb-like space into a haptic speaker.

“And if the world were born from our aqueous ashes. Intertropical cosmogony of non-temporalities//I'm against// A heap of volcanoes sedimented in a black ocean that gave back to space a few stars of the sea”

— Josèfa Ntjam

Satellite Space

In developing swell of spæc(i)es, Ntjam held exchanges with scientists at Cardiff University and Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR), Venice, focussed on plankton’s bioluminescence, migration, production of mucus shields and process of hardening into shells, fossils and sedimentary rock. Though most plankton are microscopic in size, they are vital to the planet, producing up to half of its oxygen. Plankton undertake long migrations, whether drifting with tides and currents or undertaking daily journeys through vertical water columns to avoid predators. Species such as mixotrophs demonstrate adaptability by both photosynthesising energy like a plant, and hunting for food like an animal. Ntjam sees a parallel between these tactics of hybridisation and resilience, and the histories and communities centred in her work. In swell of spæc(i)es, plankton become mythological beings that carry their stories forward.

At ISMAR’s Palazzina Canonica, audiences are invited to expand Ntjam's mythological world. Using a bespoke AI image generation interface, visitors can create fictional plankton creatures from a dataset selected by the artist. This includes images produced by ISMAR of locally sampled plankton and sculptures of water deities held in Western collections, such as Nommo and Mami Wata, a spirit known by many names, genders and forms across African and Caribbean cultures. The resulting creatures populate the marine ecosystem in the belly of the astral snake, simulated on site on an LED screen.

“[T]he non-anthropocentric dimension of my practice consists of dissolving the separation between human and non-human, between nature and history, which are two processes that are always already intertwined. I think our perception of nature — encompassing every non-human within a single term — is really revealing of the way in which dominant groups of people assign specific positions to the other, and this is one of the power mechanisms I attempt to deconstruct in my practice.”

— Josèfa Ntjam

Pavilion

Designed by UNA / UNLESS architecture studio, the pavilion housing Ntjam’s installation is situated within the courtyard of what was once the Ospedale degli Incurabili. Surrounded by colonnades, this “square” has witnessed the appearance and disappearance of a wooden chapel (built in 1523) and a church by Jacopo Sansovino (1565–1831). Since 1999 the courtyard has sat at the heart of the Venetian Accademia di Belle Arti, and served as a space for artistic experimentation.

The pavilion is a triangular blue prism which points towards the water. Its exterior surface is made of a thin polymer which billows in the wind, producing a watery effect. Whilst its abstract presence might seem alien in Venice, its symmetry and reflective surface establish a subtle dialogue with the historic context. With a footprint of 367.5 square metres, the pavilion subtly interlocks with the structure of the old hospital, forming a temporary extension which encompasses two of the courtyard’s defunct wells. Appearing to be impenetrable on approach, it is completely open towards one of the colonnades.

Upon entering the pavilion, a large convex curtain traces the curvature of Sansovino’s elliptical church, whose contour is also highlighted with pink stone slates in the courtyard pavement. The curtain's soft surface is a threshold to the organic forms teeming in Ntjam's otherworldly installation.

“The pavilion is a triangular blue prism that appears to have fallen from outer space, or else from the celestial realms projected by Josèfa Ntjam.”

— Giulia Foscari, UNA / UNLESS

Artist Biography

Josèfa Ntjam is an artist, performer and writer based in SaintÉtienne, France. Her practice combines sculpture, photomontage, moving image and sound. Collecting the raw material of her work from the internet, books on natural sciences and photographic archives, Ntjam uses assemblage — of images, words, sounds and stories — as a method to deconstruct the grand narratives underlying hegemonic discourses on origin, identity and race. Her work weaves multiple narratives drawn from investigations into historical events, scientific processes and philosophical concepts, which she confronts using references to African mythology, ancestral rituals, religious symbolism and science fiction.

References & Credits

swell of spæc(i)es is influenced by the work of the following people:

Actress, Fatima Al Qadiri, Bearcubs, ML Buch, Vinciane Despret, Dialect, Drexciya, Lauren Duffus, Kodwo Eshun, Krista Franklin, Édouard Glissant, Lorainne James, Bruce Lee, Lotic, Dr Aditee Mitra, Hayao Miyazaki, Achille Mbembe, Willfried N'Sondé, The Otolith Group, Sun Ra, Hugues Reip, Christian Sardet, Shabazz Palaces, Rivers Solomon, SZA, Mawena Yehouessi

Credits

Josèfa Ntjam: swell of spæc(i)es, 2024
Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation
20 April – 24 November 2024

swell of spæc(i)es public programme is presented with Ocean Space, Istituto di Scienze Marine and Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia.

Josèfa Ntjam Team

LAS Project team

PRODUCTION AND INSTALLATION TEAM

With thanks to:

LAS team and Louise Nielsen, Ann-Charlotte Günzel, Amira Gad and Liz Stumpf; Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (Riccardo Caldura and Carlotta Rossitto); Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Scienze Marine Venezia (Mario Sprovieri and Francesco M Falcieri); Ocean Space (Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, Markus Reymann, David Hrankovic, Marco Zappalorto, Eleni Tsopotou, Sara Mattiazzi, Valeria Bottalico, Barbara Nardacchione and Beatrice Brighenti); Biennale Arte (Adriano Pedrosa, Roberto Cicutto, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, Raffaele Cinotti); Josh Woolford, Camille Guibaud, Lua Lloyd, Brad Holdgrafer, Rees & Co (Carrie Rees, Rosanna Hawkins, Megan Miller, Manuela Gressani and Lauren Hare); Galerie Poggi, Paris (Jérôme Poggi and Camille Bréchignac); NıCOLETTı, London (Camille Houzé); and Pernod Ricard (Elisa Candiani).

Special thanks to Barrisol (Jean-Marc Scherrer and Giovanni di Tursi) and Kvadrat (Anne Schirra).