Christine Ayo
MA Fine Art
Piet Zwart Institute
During her masters at the Piet Zwart Institute, Christine Ayo developed IKOCE, an ongoing research project that questions the capability of unofficial bodies at archiving and preserving intangible cultural heritage. She took the name from the ikoce dance, a cultural dance performance conceived in reaction to socio-political shifts in Northern Uganda, occurring around the 1940s. The most significant of these shifts was the upscaling of recruitment among Lango men to serve in the King’s African Rifles, drafted to fight for the British Empire during World War II. For decades after, well into the 1990s, ikoce was implemented to provide social commentary, satire and entertainment.
Ayo studied the dance from footage she chanced upon, depicting the last documented performance in the nineties. On the one hand, her project serves as a record of this dance. On the other hand, it is an invitation to allow yourself to enjoy more inspiration and exuberance.
