notes towards an otherwise

A voice interrupts, says she.
The otherwise, much like a haunting,
is punctilious in as much as it is patient.

Precipitated by a chance encounter with my grandmother’s manuscripts recounting the British Empire’s colonial expansion and extractivism in Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia), notes towards an otherwise explores spectrality as an errant entry point, the plot––as per Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter––as a linguistic stand-in for the otherwise, and the ossification of language in the present moment. Drawing on Black studies, the text argues that poetry, figured as a form of social poiesis, provides an alternative to the barbarity of colonialism: its violent tonality and foreclosure of possibility.

Interweaved throughout the text, readers encounter a series of soundscapes produced in collaboration alongside Andreas Yakovlev Michaelides (YAKOVLEV). Moving away from the audio-essay as a strict and clinical format, these sonic works are presented as a means to commune with the spectral chorus that runs throughout the text.

The text was commissioned and published on the artistic research platform, Plot(ting), which functions as one the various lines of activity of the Lectoraat Art and Spatial Praxis (led by Dr. Patricia de Vries) at Rietveld Sandberg Research in December 2025.

* A long-form version of the soundscape was published on Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee's radio and publishing platform in February 2026.

Audio production by Andreas Yakovlev Michaeldies
Images produced by @withrust (Nepheli Papadaki, Peggy Theodorogianni)