DIGGING CRATES
Digging Crates is an ongoing project aimed at creating new insight regarding the evolution, migration and celebration of human creativity by bringing new life to heritage spaces and the objects they care for. Imagining new purpose for these institutions in the context of the 21st century.​
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The name of the project comes from a term used in Hip Hop culture to describe the process of searching in crates of vinyl records in order to find sounds and melodies that can repurposed to make new beats. In this context, it can also refer to the archeological crates that are used for transporting and storing museum objects.
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Using Hip Hop's foundational elements - Visual Art, Sound Production, Dance, Words and Community as a lens, we
re-interpret object and place, examining the intersection of de/colonialism, heritage spaces, museum collections, and ancient and modern art forms.
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We demonstrate the interconnectivity of the human experience by coalescing with common themes that drive the human desire to create, highlighting links between history and the present day.
DIGGING CRATES: Africa at the Pitt Rivers
The first iteration of Digging Crates took place at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.​
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Drawing inspiration from the African instrument collections held in the museum, and working in collaboration with musicians from colonised African nations, artists from Inner Peace Records composed new music inside the museum space, creating among objects taken from communities all over the world.
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Sampling the sounds of instruments linked to the museum's African instrument collection, the team created original Hip Hop tracks exploring the legacy of colonialism and empire.
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Alongside a 7 track album Digging Crates Vol. 1, the project produced a one hour documentary recorded during the main four days of activity in the museum. The film has been shown to two sold out cinema audiences.
To launch the album, the team performed a sold out live show at Oxford Art Gallery OVADA.
INNER PEACE RECORDS PRESENTS...
DIGGING CRATES VOL. 1
Using objects from the African instrument collections held in the Pitt Rivers Museum as inspiration, artists from Inner Peace Records composed new music inside the museum space, working in collaboration with musicians from colonised nations in Africa, among objects taken from communities all over the world.
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Sampling the sounds of instruments linked to the museum's African instrument collection, the team created original Hip Hop tracks exploring the legacy of colonialism and empire.
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THE GATHERING PLACE
Building on the success of the first iteration of Digging Crates, Rawz was invited to become one of the first ever "Creative Fellows" of the Pitt Rivers Museum alongside South African artist and activist Xolile "X" Madinda. Together Rawz and X envisioned bringing together Digging Crates with X's Xhosa heritage and the tradition of Ubuhlanti - a solution oriented approach based on mutual understanding.
As the only artist on site for much of the residency Rawz conceptualised and planned a transformation of the museum space into a living art work, a meeting place of cultures, histories and sounds from throughout time and space. A Gathering Place.
Rawz created 3 new tracks using the museum's sound archive - bringing together audio recordings made across Africa throughout the 20th century to form something new. He presented these works live alongside performances from X and Nigerian arts collective Taruwa inside the transformed museum space.
​MAKING THE MUSEUM PODCAST
In this podcast episode produced by the Pitt Rivers Museum, X and Rawz discuss their experiences producing new work using sounds from the museum archives. The project team talk about how understanding more about makers (rather than takers!) fits into the work of a modern museum.
COMING SOON - DIGGING CRATES: The Messiah Violin
This short film is based around a live recording made in the Ashmolean Museum's stringed instrument gallery, in the presence of the priceless Stradivari violin known as The Messiah - one of the iconic violin makers most celebrated masterpieces.
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Rawz' poetry questions the use of the violin as a silent collector's piece, played only a handful of times in it’s almost 300 year lifespan; casting the violin as a fairy tale princess, locked away by a possessive and paranoid king, a twisted act of protection preventing her beauty and her song being shared with the world. He performs the poem alongside cellist Lou Lyne and violinist Natalie V who co-composed a string accompaniment based on Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor. The strings almost "sample" the Vivaldi's classic work, in tune with the Hip Hop sensibilities of Digging Crates, providing a dramatic and achingly compelling backing to Rawz' words. The piece explores notions of beauty, silence, expression and the value and purpose of art and collecting.
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In addition to writing and performing the spoken word, and initiating the project, Rawz also directed and edited the film.
RAWZ & Miles Ncube - Recorded Live @ OVADA
A delicately woven combination of Spoken Word and Mbira, this live recording was captured as part of a night of celebration marking the launch of Digging Crates Vol. 1, the show was presented to a capacity crowd at Oxford art gallery OVADA.
After a year working on the groundbreaking project, Inner Peace Records launched Digging Crates Vol. 1 with a live performance of the entire album. Before the main event, the gathered crowd were treated to an energetic performance from veteran African jazz band Wanda-NA-KL, followed by this intimate performance from two artists who struck up a friendship through their work together on the first ever Digging Crates project.