I was so mad, I walked and didn't want to talk to anyone - Itumeleng Moses

These divisions were violently enforced by successive white governments through Apartheid legislation and police brutality. Because these scars are so deeply etched onto the urban landscape, the lines of division are still reflected in how we experience the city - it is as if the buildings are coated in the trauma of the past and our spaces echo with the voices of this dark past. Apartheid put its bloody stamp on our sonic experience of the city because it shaped our spaces. It also took control of people’s identities and by implication their personal narratives. How then do we negotiate this layer of history in ways that are sensitive to those who experienced it directly, and also in a way that paints the picture to a new generation that is largely impervious to their past?

A powerful and potent starting point is through conversation, more specifically, conversation directed towards healing and witnessing the past. Here, Itumeleng Moses and Jill Richards’ recording is about the importance of remembering, in opposition to a past that many would rather forget; listening then becomes activism.