Dani Kyengo O'Neill

Dani Kyengo O'Neill (they/them) is a Kenyan-South African sound artist, composer, filmmaker and spatial artist. Their practice explores black sonic auralities, dialogues of riddim, movement and gendered histories in South Africa and its relationship to the diaspora, through filmmaking, sound installation, audio-visual scoring and experimental performance. 

Their composition practices try to engage the listener in the movement of sound as an option for asking questions. Questions that ask us to listen or locate or parody or confront and carefully discern past-and-present-myths of our reality, narratives of displacement, critical fabulating and plural imaginings of home and belonging in the world, through sound and film. 

They blend together theater, film (the act of seeing) and space with composition, digital performance, improvisation and arrival, jazz, electronic music histories, space, assembly, gathering, memory through sonically curated and textured experiences in their installations and films... 

They are based in South Africa, and are currently completing their MA at the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. Current projects include directing a short film for the British Film Institute and 'Liquid Geographies, Liquid Borders,' at the 17thInternational Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, How will we live together? curated by Hashim Sarkis. They’ve worked with composer, cellist and improviser Okkyung Lee and Argentinian composer Laura Andel, collaborated with artists Bronwyn Katz, Gabrielle Goliath and Tabita Rezaire. Their work has been curated by Nkule Mabaso, Luvuyo Nyawose, Deborah Joyce Holman for PICO: Un parlante de Africa en America at Auto Italia Live Galleries UK, and Christine Eyene at the Southbank Centre, UK.