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Unveiling the Inner Artist: InterArts Cabinet of Curiosity

Yves Semana Gisubizo (Sem-G Dile)

Yves Semana Gisubizo alias Sem-G Dile is a music artist & producer, dancer, choreographer, theatre and film actor. Sem-G Dile has been doing music performances since his early age but has started pursuing this as a career in 2020 whereby since then he has released two singles this year 2021: The official music video of ONLINE and the audio for Commando. He has also been dancing since he was young. Dancing and music go together in his artistic intentions and creations. He went to a United World College of India 2018-2020 from there he graduated in 2020 with an International Baccalaureate high school diploma. At this school, he was pursuing sic subjects: Computer Science, Theatre, and Economics and higher level and Maths, English Language & Literature and Spanish for Beginners at standard level.

In 2019 is when Yves started exploring and strengthening his new artistic skill in the theatre artform. He staged a devised physical theatre piece about the Rwandan genocide against tutsi called “A Speechless heal to renew” which was mostly portraying the unity and reconciliation currently in Rwanda after its dark 100 days of genocide. Then, In 2020, he created and staged his other devised entertainment theatre piece called “UWC International Talent Show” which combined a lot of other artforms such as music, poetry, comedy and a lot of different dance styles such as African dance, Bollywood, Hip-Hop and K-pop.

Moreover, as a dancer, Yves was the coordinator and choreographer of an Afro-Latin dance club at his high school which welcomed every student from any part of the world who was interested in learning and enjoying both African and Latin dance moves and vibes. With this group, they performed a dancing flash mob in 2019 in the school dining hall dancing to Yope Remix by Innoss’B (DRC) ft. Diamond Platnumz(Tanzania).

In 2020, Yves got admitted to Trinity College in Hartford, CT where he is currently pursuing his Bachelor Degree. He has focused on working a lot on exploring and showcasing a lot of his music and dance talents. He has a vision in music along with dancing as his main focus artform and foundation for his future investments.

View some of his work from fall 2020 in the gallery below.

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The Chapel Image By Yves Semana Gisubizo

When I was visiting the Watkinson library online, this picture caught my attention so quickly. It is the image of the Trinity College chapel under construction back in 1931. The reason why it caught my attention real quick is because immediately as I saw it, without reading its caption, I visualized in my mind trinity chapel but with a different kind of feeling and perception compared to the current chapel building. Additionally, what made me give this object a value to be part of our cabinet of wonders, is during this time I have been trying to come back closer to God and make my relationship with him a closer one as I feel like I have distanced from him since I came here. So, when I saw this picture, it set up a mood of christinaity in my heart and mind but in a different sense than what seeing the current chapel does.

From my background and culture, we are raised mostly in chirstian families and we are taught to fear and respect God and his house which is the church. So, in my country, every christina has a certain way in which they treat a church respectfully. For instance, you can not just walk into a church and start shouting or playing inside, when you enter you should behave differently, humble and respectful of God’s place. This special environment sets a totally different feeling in any chirstina’s heart, making it feel like God is actually talking and living closely to you. This tradition has made me perceive any church or chapel I see in different in a respectful manner and this makes it feel special to me through my senses and feelings.

Thus when I saw this chapel under construction, I did not feel too much of my normal respect and fear of the chapel simply because it’s under construction and doesn’t provide that God-presence and fearing feeling.

However, when I see the chapel now, I get that God-presence and fearing feeling that makes me feel somehow connected closer to God when I’m near or inside the campus chapel. This specifically made me understand how much the physicality or setting of something can have a huge impact on our inner senses and feelings affecting how we think and feel.

I also decided to keep this picture as my object, because compared to my home place, religion is not a huge thing in people’s lives here, so exploring more about this is a good chance for me to connect back to my faith.
Current View and Atmosphere of the Chapel

I wanted to take a live picture of the chapel at night at the current time to be able to portray this main visual difference in view and feeling but I was quarantined the time I worked on this object. However, this image above also provides some special feeling I described above to a satisfying extent.
My Response Creativity
In response to this object, I produced a 2 minutes sound track found below that represents my inner feelings and senses in relation to the chapel and religion as from my background.
Sources
Dudley, William G. (photographer, American, act. 1865), Frohman, Robb and Little (architectural firm, American)., Trinity College Chapel construction, 1931.11.02, 8 x 10 in., Watkinson Library
Note from Parisha
By Yves Semana Gisubizo
My point of inspiration for this object has been a note from my Indian friend that I met in 2019 when I was there for my high school. She was a junior by the time I was a senior at Mahindra United World College of India and we both stayed in the same residential housing “Wada 3” as it was labeled. Her name is Parisha.
Normally, whenever I feel down or disconnected from my passion and what makes me happy, I try to view me through others. I do this by connecting to my friends and sharing with them about ourselves and looking at how much we’ve done so far and try to encourage each of us to even do more. Another way I bring back my positivity and inspiration is to go through the notes I got from my friends on my birthdays, buddies, etc. I have most of them hung around my room. So when I was going through them this time randomly is when out of nowhere I got to see this note from Parisha motivating me to “keep dancing and keep loving”. This felt like the greatest inspiration at the moment.
One reason why this touched me right away is it reminded of how much we both regret not having spent more time together and learned about each other a bit more until we realised we had a week or less to depart to our home places due to Covid-19 break-through.
The moment I saw this note, the first thing that came to my mind was the dance moments I had from this high school with the AfroLatin dancing club I was coordinating along with my friends. This club was my safe and joy space like everyone else who was part of it. It’s that space where we got our minds and bodies off the school work and all other negatives but just come together to freely dance and vibe to the African and Latin dance moves exploring and sharing both places’ culture, music, etc.
Moreover, this dancing space is one of the very important things to most participant dancers because like me, it equipped us with the confidence and capabilities of going out there and showing the world what we got.
I chose this song Yope by Innoss’B ft Diamond Platnumz just because it’s one of the big things we did in this dance club and with Parisha. We threw a flashmob in the dining cafeteria at dinner dancing to this and everyone was shocked and astonished by watching. This made my best life experience on this campus and as a dancer/choreographer.
Parisha is a very talented Bollywood dancer. However, like I said I realised this late and we did not have much time to dance and enjoy together. Meanwhile, in the little time we started hanging out for a while, before covid hit and we were abruptly forced to go home, I got a chance to ask her to be part of my dance show, UWC International Talent Show, that I was staging as part of my IB theatre class. Fortunately, she accepted my invitation and she did miracles within the show with her friend Harshita. (Watch here from 39:53).
Moreover, recreating this dance choreograph that I worked on for a long time ago in my small room, just brought my energy and joy back in my recent dancing routine. This was a very important thing to have during this pandemic where most of the things feel like are not going great and it can be easy to forget how beautiful, powerful and joyful art can be for the artists themselves and for the viewers. I utilized the little space I had, to recreate and rebuild my dancing and my joy for dancing.

This dance has a lot of very significant African moves such as the pope move, the shaku and the shook. These are all dance moves that have shaped my body and dancing style. When it comes to the way I move my arms, my legs and my head, it is highly influenced by my East African culture, background and prior afro-dancing experiences. My main artistic intention in any of my African and other dances, is to make sure all my body parts work in collaboration simultaneously informing and emphasizing the artistic meaning and feeling of my dance. And that's why most of the moves are energy heavy, intense and elaborate.
To conclude, this made me miss my pre-covid dancing experiences and performances solo and more with my friends such as Parisha herself. I hope I can do something like that again really soon. Thanks to interarts for allowing me to do the best I can with my passion during this hard time.
Sources:
Youtube: Sem-G Dile Official, 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqwcwzSBtHY
Youtube: Sem-G Dile Official, 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmogKSkBoQM
Youtube: Diamond Platnumz, 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebZ7Ng1okCg
Grandfather's Camera
By Yves Semana Gisubizo
The object that I found worth being represented in our cabinet is this old camera passed down to me by my father passed down to him by my grandfather.

This as you can see in the picture, is an old fashioned and less functional camera from those old years. During the living time of my grandfather, this is probably one of the biggest technological equipment that surprised everyone around. And this is the main reason why it was of a very huge significance to him and to his entire family.

He used this camera like twice a year, and the rest of the time it could be kept in a very preservative place very far away from anybody else so they could not destroy it. He mostly used it when he was getting married to different wives as he had all four of them.

Whenever I look in our photo albums at home and see some of the pictures that were taken by this genius grandfather, I always miss him as I never got a chance to meet him. The photos that were taken by this camera seem to be not the best ones for this world full of advancing technologies, but if you look at the angles and how much skills they put in trying to capture the best photo they could, it’s really amazing to view. The photos are not so beautiful but they are very skillfully taken. This equipment being one of the things with the greatest value my grandfather had, he wanted it to live forever within his descendants. My grandfather had two daughters and one son, who is my Dad. He died of a car accident. Before he died he had revealed to my Dad where the camera was always safely kept so that during the time when he’s gone, my Dad could take it over and preserve it. My Dad did that and that’s the reason this is still here.

In my family, it’s me and my two sisters. None of them is a big fan of technology or fancy stuff except me who grew up loving to be a technological and magical oriented guy. When my Dad saw that I had much passion for musical and technological instruments such as the piano, computers, etc that’s when he started introducing me to this beautiful and significant tool. He started teaching me how to use and most importantly how to keep it safe.

Later in my 15, I started being the one to play around with taking some pictures during wedding ceremonies and other ceremonies like graduations that happened at home. This is a very easy camera to learn how to use as long as you are open minded and curious enough to explore how it works. I became very proud of using it around and I asked him to give it to me. He handed it to me because he saw how much I loved it. He told me all that history about and I promised to preserve it as safe as I can and to go with it everywhere I go. That’s why I took it when I went to India in 2018 and I brought it here. Unfortunately, it no longer works because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with its battery and it’s hard to find another one to replace it.
Enjoy Life
By Yves Semana Gisubizo (Sem-G Dile)

When I was thinking about what gift I should create for Catherine out of my artistic talents, I had a challenge of whether I was going to make for her a dance, a song, or something different. Thus, I decided to put down some factors of what I want this gift to consist of so that I can choose a better platform. Some of the factors I based on while creating her gift are:

-   A direct way of communication
-   The simplicity of the gift for the Catherine
-   Providing her with something that I really love myself

Then, later on, I came to choose music as the best suiting for of art from which I have to create her gift. I chose music specifically because although I’m a dancer and really love dancing, the music feels like the heart of my artistry to me. So it felt like something that I was really attached to and would give me and Catherine a simple way of communicating through this gift which makes it easy for me to pass the message and for Catherine to receive it in a more accurate way as part of my intentions behind this gift. Dance can take different forms itself and in making dance, the message from the artist is sometimes ambiguous and/or indirect in a form that the audience depicts very different meanings from it regardless of the artist’s dancing skills and artistic choices.

Furthermore, as for any form of art, the perception of an art product can vary on very many different things such as the receiver’s background, history, personality, etc. So I thought writing the message down and pass it to her through music with a form of rhythm to it was going to make it more effective and powerful for her.

The main intention behind this gift is to bring motivation, joy, and enjoyment to the listener of the song. And that is the reason why I chose to title the song “Enjoy life” so that from the title itself the listener can easily depict a certain form of feeling or meaning for themselves before they even hear the song. Actually, the title of this song came after writing the whole song.

The process of making this song is I made the up-vibe beat that gives as much of my intentional feelings as it can, and then later from listening to the beat I started writing the song. I got stuck in the middle a bit and had to call my friend and talented musician Naomi to help me find some rhythm and further polish the song.

Moreover, I chose this specific type of song gift because I felt like at the end of this freshman year where we’ve experienced too much work load and many different good and bad experiences, I needed to provide Catherine with something that makes her take some time to enjoy and celebrate this achievement of completing her first year in college and just take time off to enjoy life before starting o stress about the upcoming work ahead.

To conclude, I like providing gifts that have a high value to me because then it feels special to give them to another person. I hope she likes this song although as a beginning music producer, it’s not the best song out there, I appreciate being in this class because I’ve gotten a very good space to learn a lot and grow my personal talents from my colleague’s collaborations and it also allowed to help my fellow artists in class in different artistic experiences.
Sources
Youtube: Music Tech Training Center, 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZgvvCG-yTA
Youtube: Tomas George, 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ylro6nD0k

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