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Un-Muting Sonic Restitutions: An Afternoon of Afrosonic Explorations and Improvisations with Satch Hoyt

Name: Un-Muting Sonic Restitutions: An Afternoon of Afrosonic Explorations and Improvisations with Satch Hoyt
Start: 2025-11-22T15:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-11-22T17:00:00-05:00
Location: ImprovLab

November 22, 2025 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Free

Poster for Satch Hoyt event in ImprovLab. Black, green, blue, and orange text replicates information in the listing below. A portrait of Satch Hoyt seated in front of a painting and taken by Dale Grant takes up the right side of the image, while an inset image of an abstract blue and yellow painting with a beige background occupies space in the upper left quadrant. Colourful squiggly lines and dots are featured throughout the poster, which has a white background. Sponsor logos for IICSI, the University of Guelph's College of Arts, and the Art Gallery of Guelph are featured at the bottom of the poster.

IICSI is thrilled to share an exciting and informative afternoon of conversation and an open improv jam session with internationally-acclaimed visual artist and musician, Satch Hoyt! Curated by former IICSI postdoctoral research fellow jashen edwards and featuring IMPR students, this event will offer a glimpse into the ways art and music can be a vehicle for social-political inquiry into injustices sustained by forced migration and xenophobic policies. Join us at ImprovLab from 3-5 PM on Saturday, November 22nd for this free event!

For his Canadian tour, Hoyt will discuss his project: Un-muting Sonic Restitutions, in which he collaborates with national galleries and museums across the globe, including the ROM, unearthing their African musical instrument collections and breathing new life into the wood, metal, beads and cowries that have laid dormant for so long. Hoyt will also share thoughts on the making of his new album, Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders.

At ImprovLab, Hoyt will be joined by a core septet consisting of Daniel Fischlin, Matt Brubeck, Reagan Mitchell, David Lee, Mike Hansen, Hayden Mesnick, and jashen edwards.

Hoyt is a Jamaican-British Berlin-based visual artist and musician. A believer in ritual and retention, his diverse and multifaceted body of work – whether sculpture, sound installation, painting, musical performance, or musical recording – is united in its investigation of the “Eternal Afro-Sonic Signifier” and its movement across and amid the cultures, peoples, places, and times of the African Diaspora. Hoyt is an intimate observer of the sites of convergence where the Diaspora comes together to sing, shout, and be, reflecting itself to itself. Employing the shared tool kit to connect, express, and commiserate across centuries and oceans, Hoyt taps into aural and oral echoes as well as into those retained in the historical and material record (Rujeko Hockley, for the catalog Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, 2017).

This event is co-presented with the College of Arts Interdisciplinary Program and the Art Gallery of Guelph!