Performance and transcendence have always maintained close links. That's why Louise O'Kelly, Founding Director and Curator of Block Universe, London's leading performance art festival, catches up with two artists from the 2019 edition, Paul Maheke and Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi) for a mystical exchange on the concept of transcendence and performance practice.

For the Block Universe festival in 2019, Paul Maheke and Melika Ngombe Kolongo collaborated to produce Sènsa, a performance using African cosmology from the Bantu-Kongo and creation stories as its source material. A collaboration of music, design and performance, music producer Nkisi provided the soundtrack and Ariel Efraim Ashbel the lighting design, within which Maheke performed. This conversation offers a moment of reflection for the artists on their relationship to spiritual practice, and the impact this collaboration had on their work.