Carroll / Fletcher: Page 36

Carroll / Fletcher

John Akomfrah

31 March – 6 April

Memory Room 451 (1997)

Originally entitled Hair, Memory Room 451, conceived by Black Audio Film Collective as a companion piece to last week’s The Last Angel of History, delves once more into ‘Black unpopular culture’ (in this case, hairstyles such as the afro, the conk and dreadlocks) to continue their exploration of the Black Diaspora and the nature of memory. Set in a dystopic world in which dream raiders from two centuries in the future steal stories from ‘old wigs and hair…where the dead tell their secrets and desires’ to construct a history of their past that is simultaneously the story of our present, Memory Room 451 is a bitter science fiction fable in the manner of the ground-breaking writers featured in The Last Angel of History. The film, shot in trade-mark neo-expressionist style, also continues Akomfrah’s exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of digital technologies.

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“Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything – except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.”
― Chris Marker

“I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?”
― Chris Marker

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Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

From Burnt Norton, T S Eliot

John Akomfrah

24 – 30 March

The Last Angel of History (1995)

Part science fiction fable, in which a time travelling Data Thief from 200 years in the future excavates the ruins of the present in search of the key to the future, and part interview-based documentary examining the inter-related development of funk music, science fiction and Afro-futurism, The Last Angel of History (1995) creates connections between Black unpopular culture, outer space and the limits of the human condition. In the film the science fiction tropes of alien abduction, estrangement and genetic engineering act as metaphors for the Black diasporic experience of slavery, cultural alienation and otherness, while the radical inventiveness, away from the traditions of street and stage, of the music offers the possibility of a new Black critical aesthetic.

The Last Angel of History is also innovative in its use of digital technologies. In the film Akomfrah explores the chromatic and collage possibilities of digital video, in a manner that is eerily prefigures, at a twenty year remove, the work of many young artist film-makers today.

Afro-futurism in The Last Angel of History

‘Don’t reflect the past imagine the future.’

‘Our music is a mirror of the universe, we explore the future through music.’

‘Wandering the boundaries between science fiction and social reality.’

Link to 1993-4 pre-filming outline by John Akomfrah and Edward George

“In the future, like racial memory, black futurology may be allotted rooms on the internet. Housed in cyberspace vaults marked ‘tomorrow’, coded with a connective emblem, this past, our present, could be the key to making sense of the future, the present of some yet unborn black person….

http://chimurengachronic.co.za/the-last-angel-of-history/

From On The Concept Of History, Walter Benjamin, 1940

Fragment IX

“There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.”

John Akomfrah

17 – 23 March 2014

Seven Songs for Malcolm X

“I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment” Malcolm X.

The African-American civil rights leader Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965.

“For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slave master name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears.” Malcolm X.

Through archival footage, extracts from Malcolm’s writings and speeches, recollections from family, friends and fellow activists, and stylised tableaux vivants, Seven Songs For Malcolm X, Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film, weaves a compelling portrait of a committed revolutionary.

“When we look at other parts of this Earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red, and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their Independence. They are not getting it by singing “We shall over come”. No, they are getting it through Nationalism. It is Nationalism that brought about the independance of the people in Asia…. and it will take Black Nationalism to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years….” Malcolm X

The stylised tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life reference the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

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Transfigured Night (2013), John Akomfrah’s two-screen installation exploring the disappointments of post-Independence Africa, is currently on view at Carroll / Fletcher as part of a group exhibition featuring work by Phoebe Boswell and Rashaad Newsome. Click here for further information on the exhibition.

Click here to view John Akomfrah’s artist page at Carroll / Fletcher.