an [ im ] material space rooted in martinique/wanakaera functioning as an artistic and cultural research lab engaging togetherness and experimental pedagogy
The concept SIANO was initially inspired by the seminal track of the same title, released in the album “Blanc Mangé” in 1990 by Eugène Mona [1943 –– 1991], a Martinican musical legend, renowned for fusing Afro-Caribbean rhythms, blending tradition, modernity, Jazz, bèlè, and improvisation. Taking cue from this sonic piece, the publication explores the cultural dynamics of the Caribbean through an expensive repertoire of sonic forms such as Bèlè, Gwoka, Zouk, Biguine, amongst others. These sounds carry embedded knowledge, gestures of resistance, and a shifting cartography of rhythm––marking a lineage that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. SIANO weaves together a constellation of contributions, including newly commissioned works and recorded conversations, spanning academic and non-academic fields such as art, design, cinema, architecture, sound production and research-led practice.
In our commitment to cultural specificity and circulation across the Caribbean and its diasporas, this edition is published in Martinican/ Palé Matinitjé, English, and French––equally tracing the sonic and political resonances that extend to geographies such as the Brazilian Portuguese-speaking African world. Essays and conversations are translated across the three languages; poems, however, have been kept in their original form. This choice honours the untranslatability of poetic syntax, and seeks to preserve poetry’s sonic and memorial integrity as gestural, vibrational, and an embodied utterance.
Within the context of Nianiba’s immaterial space operating as an artistic and research laboratory, we focused on generating strong threads of solidarity across diverse pedagogical and territorial perspectives, while maintaining our commitment to foregrounding sensorial modes of encounter, including ways of lyanné, moving, gazing and listening. This publication is grounded in the premise that ( historical ) narration through audiovisual archaeology can act as a tool against cultural erasure. SIANO draws from an extensive and multilayered trajectory precipitated by the Nianiba educational programme, as it has centred Caribbean cultures; weaving together recorded memories and fictional anecdotes; to imagining new forms of historical recognition through sound. The project highlights the enduring role of sonorities and sound system cultures in social, political and epistemic movements of liberation across the Black Atlantic, as these resonances continue to inform contemporary popular culture references, and our modes of resistance.
Segmented into four chapters, non-predictable visual interventions and poetry, the publication hosts intergenerational dialogues through an assembly of disciplines, perspectives and visual vocabularies, ultimately manifesting into a realm of poetico-politic narratives. Each intervention pulsates with a polyphonic approach, posing oral histories, archival material, sonic scores and speculative narratives in various (non)places, allowing them ample room to coexist; to interact. Readers are invited to move through varying shifts in tempo; slowness and urgency, all in an effort to reflect on practices of relation, survival and sonic possibilities. The publication emerges as an embodied document and an instrument designed to activate philosophical and rooted methodologies.
Adama Keïta and Henrique J. Paris
To the bright particulars who have illuminated our days and nights with their passion, generosity, talent, and trust. To you, who have made SIANO a space of creation and nourishment, in togetherness.
To our ancestors, who walk with us all ways and always, we give thanks. Without you, nothing we create in the present moment would exist. We have the capacity to create in the continuity of who we are, through you and thanks to you.
To Eugène Mona, who paved the way, inscribed the musical legacy of Martinique, and by his generosity has shed light on the identity of an entire community. May your words, your strength, your magic and your values timelessly resonate inside of us and within us, exuding outwards in various multiplicities.
Editors :
Adama Keïta and Henrique J Paris
Contributors : Dominique Cyrille, Siméline Jean-Baptiste, Johanna Mirabel, Antonio Carlos Araújo Ribeiro Júnior, Maria Luiza de Barros Rodrigues, Noor-Sharina Grondin, Adama Keïta, Marie-Héléna Laumuno, Naomi Lulendo, Vanessa Fanchonnette,Voukoum, Julian Henriques, Henrique J Paris, Candice Zogo Mvoa, Deanna Nelson-Mckie, Stéphanie Brossard, Clémence Lollia Hilaire, Oceane Baulcombe-Toppin, Minia Biabiany, Tânia Miranda de Carvalho, Simone Lagrand, Alice Grandoit-Šutka, Elayis Rubrice, Quentin Tannous, Fanny Irina Sinecoindin and Florine Démosthène.
Cover imagined and made by :
Elayis Rubrice
Artistic Directors and Print Coordinators : Beatrice Cauda and Giulia Zanzarella
Translator in Martinican :
Muriel Daclinat Schwartz
Proofreader in English :
gervaise alexis savvias
© Nianiba, 2025