Inspired by the ancient concept of The Messenger, suns of mercury builds bridges between communities and nations
Our work began in Melbourne in 2016 as a multicultural music project that has since evolved to include community development collaborations in Brazil and Cuba. In Rio de Janeiro we are working with the city’s Hortas Cariocas program and the community of Manguinhos to cultivate medicinal herbs. In Havana we are collaborating with the Ifá Iranlowo cultural association and the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation to support awareness and production of therapeutic plants. These projects are funded by the Australian government’s Direct Aid Program.
At home in Melbourne we collaborate with the city’s Nigerian Yoruba community to make music and support the timeless tradition of storytelling. Our Yoruba Heritage virtual tour, produced with the Yoruba Heritage and Cultural Association of Victoria, explores the talking drum, tribal facemarks, beadwork, and other vibrant Yoruba practices in a simple and engaging way for young people.
Also available on this website is our “Who is Nature?” 360-degrees experience. Filmed in Mexico, Cuba, and Australia, it takes viewers on an interactive journey to ceremonial sites of natural beauty, spiritual power, and Dreaming. Featured in the UK’s Being Human Festival and used as a multimedia resource in classrooms internationally, “Who is Nature?” provokes questions about the agency of our natural environment. Each of the project’s community leaders and traditional healers argues that nature seeks our interaction not as a resource to be used but rather as a living entity to engage.
While Suns of Mercury continues to evolve and expand, a common thread is the music we create. Each of the above projects has enabled the co-creation of songs that bring together prominent musicians from the communities where we work. Available on our music page, these collaborative pieces speak messages louder and clearer than words: Counterflow evokes the beauty of Birrarung (the Yarra River and its tributaries) in Narrm (Melbourne), Keeper of Secrets brings a contemporary feel to the mysteries of Yoruba cosmology, and Aftermath reflects on ancestral cycles of failure and success. Produced with Harmonic Whale Studio and other partners, our music is the heartbeat of what we do.
So we end where we began: building bridges between communities and nations. For me, as director of Suns of Mercury, this is a familiar endeavour. Born in Edinburgh of ethnically dynamic parents (English, Brazilian, Greek, and Indian among their ancestries), I moved with them to Geneva as an infant, to London a few years later, to Madison (Wisconsin) as a teenager, to Dakar in my early 20s, to Melbourne at 25, and then as an anthropologist to Havana, Rio, Tijuana, and Beijing. A nomadic life has provoked reflection on identity: both my own and those of the international communities that have kindly invited me in. Among these communities is the University of Melbourne, where the support of my colleagues inspires my research and pursuit of new frontiers (and their transgression). Suns of Mercury continues to walk in step with the winged boots of Hermes, the forward and backward-looking faces of Izimud and Janus, and the paradoxical wisdom of the Yoruba child Echu. There is no end of bridges to build.