Get the best of Domus straight to your inbox!

Curry Stone Design Prize

The Curry Stone Foundation has named Studios Kabako – a Congolese performance and theater studio founded by Faustin Linyekula – the 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize Winner.

Studios Kabako, a Congolese performance and theater studio founded by Faustin Linyekula in 2001 to  address social memory, fear, and hope in the aftermath of civil war, is the winner of the Curry Stone Design Prize 2014.

Through its cultural programs and urban interventions, the studio aims to create a network for dance and artistic expression in a city that is geographically and culturally isolated, and that has been the theater for a series of major battles over the last decades.

Studios Kabako presents art not as a form of entertainment but as a form of political empowerment. The studio uses different tools – among these, dance, theater, and music – to help local communities imagine an alternative to the hardships of daily life, and understand that they can have a hand in creating a better future.

Over the years Studios Kabako has steadily developed its presence in Kisangani by producing and performing works in the city; offering youth programs in many artistic forms; and providing the facilities and technical expertise to help residents produce art that exposes the city’s most critical issues while building the possibilities for alternative developments.

The young people in the DRC are the direct beneficiaries of Studios Kabako’s work, gaining dance, music and artistic skills as well as professional expertise in writing, development, video and event production. Some students become part of the Linyekula’s touring group or create their own touring projects, produced by Studios Kabako.

Studios Kabako also practices urban acupuncture. Though the organization maintains offices and recording and rehearsal studios in the city center, it has brought its work to the rural fringes and vacant areas of Kisangani by organizing a series of mobile performances.

Studio Kabako is currently working with Viennese architect Bärbel Müller to build two more facilities within the city; through these projects the studio is experimenting with environmentally friendly technologies, communal living systems, and educational models that are unprecedented in this region.