The Otolith Group and Richard Couzins
Otolith I
2003, 23’16”
17 March – 23 March 2015
“There is no memory without image and no image without memory. Image is the matter of memory.”
Otolith 1
Background
Otolith I is set in the 22nd Century, when the human race is no longer able to survive on earth and is obliged to live in the agravic conditions of the International Space Station. Dr. Usha Adebaran Sagar, the future descendent of Otolith Group member Anjalika Sagar, is an exo- anthropologist researching life on an earth that she can experience only through media archives. Otolith imagines a mutant future that simultaneously harks back to the post war era of non-alignment so as to indicate an connection between the production of commonality in South Asia, USSR and the present. Otolith 1 was the Otolith Group’s first project. It was commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and the M.I.R. Consortium (Arts Catalyst, Projekt Atol, V2, Leonardo-Olats).
Otolith noun
“1. (Gr lithos stone) a calcerous concretion in the ear of various animals, the movement of which helps the animal to maintain equilibrium.”
Source: Chambers Dictionary
Waiting for the Future – Nina Power on the Otolith Trilogy (Frieze Magazine 2010)
“There are more futures than we realize, and more failures too. The past is littered with the debris of these futures, while our present incorporates the unstable collective memory of hopes that have long since been abandoned… [The Otolith Group’s] use of documentary footage, of archives both familiar and alien, provides a melancholy window onto worlds not created and paths not followed… [full article here]”
Courtesy Nina Power and Frieze Magazine.
About the Otolith Group
The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 and consists of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun who live and work in London. The work is research based and in particular has focused on the essay film as a form that seeks to look at conditions, events and histories in their most expanded form.
Credits
Directed and Edited by the Otolith Group
Narration – Anjalika Sagar
Camera – Richard Couzins
Script – Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar
Sound Design – Trevor Mathison and Anjalika Sagar
Sound track – Ekkehard Ehlers, Plays John Cassavetes
Standard 8 Film used by kind permission of Vidya Sagar
Women in Space, British Film Institute, ETV Collection
With Special Thanks to: Chitra Gyan-Chand, Anand Patwardhan, Trevor Mathison, Ewen Chardronnet, Duncan Youngerman, Jean Luc Soret, Natasha Petresin, Kathy Rae Huffman, Vidya Sagar and Michelle Deignan.
Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst and the MIR Consortium
Courtesy of The Otolith Group and LUX, London