Wired (And Piped) 

Wired (and Piped) is part II of our collaboration where the Chicoco collective are building infrastructures of light and voice across the self-built neighbourhoods of Nigeria’s oil capital, Port Harcourt: from community media platforms to regenerative energy infrastructure systems, they are putting light where their mouths are. This piece explores the politics of infrastructure, the infrastructure of protest, and songs of the belly with audio reports, music, and sounds of the streets.  
Brought to you by the Chicoco collective, stories, songs and sounds from the self-built waterfront neighbourhoods of Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil capital.
“Chicoco” means mud, the black, fibrous mud that people living in Port Harcourt’s waterfront communities cut from the mangroves and throw down on the river’s edge to reclaim land from the creeks. They build their homes on this mud.

In August, 2009, 19,000 of these homes and businesses were reduced to rubble over the course of a single weekend. As people picked through the debris of their former lives, the governor declared his intention to demolish all the city’s informal waterfront settlements, home to over half a million people. 

The Chicoco collective came together in response to this threat, so that overlooked communities could make themselves seen and heard. The collective comprises a cluster of platforms: Chicoco Radio, a youth-led digital station reaching audiences citywide; Chicoco Studios, building music production and performance spaces in the waterfronts; Chicoco Cinema, a mobile, inflatable cinema and moving image production project; and Chicoco Maps, sharing the skills, tools, and confidence that allow people to put themselves on the map.