John Akomfrah: Exploring Memory, Diaspora, and Climate Change Through Film Installations

This exhibition by filmmaker and screenwriter John Akomfrah features three interconnected film installations, including 'Vertigo Sea' (2015), 'Peripeteia' (2012), and 'Mnemosyne' (2010). The works explore themes of memory, diaspora, post-colonialism, and the impact of climate change, often using water as a central motif.

Filmmaker and screenwriter John Akomfrah's exhibition delves into the structures of memory, the experiences of migrants in their diasporas, and the historical, societal, and political contexts of post-colonialism. As a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah collaborates with David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, employing a multi-layered visual style that blends archival material, literary texts, and newly filmed sequences. His filmic montages resist singular narratives, often presented as multi-channel video installations that explore different moments and stories through juxtaposition and dialogue. The exhibition at Secession features three thematically complementary installations: the three-channel projection 'Vertigo Sea' (2015), and the two single-channel projections 'Peripeteia' (2012) and 'Mnemosyne' (2010). A recurring motif binding these works is water, functioning as a repository of memory and, in its oceanic vastness, a site where colonial conquests, the transatlantic slave trade, and contemporary migration movements took shape. 'Vertigo Sea' specifically addresses climate change, linking humanity's destruction of the natural world with self-destruction through overwhelming nature footage contrasted with historical, fictional, and philosophical elements. The imagery ranges from BBC nature archive material and footage of whaling and Mediterranean refugees to new shots from Skye, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. The film's soundscape combines whale songs, orchestral music, and literary readings from works like 'Moby Dick' and 'To the Lighthouse.' A recurring figure in historical uniform embodies Olaudah Equiano, a former slave and abolitionist, presented in a manner reminiscent of Romantic paintings, inviting viewers to contemplate the complex realities of beauty and terror. 'Mnemosyne' and 'Peripeteia' meditate on life in diasporas and the nature of memory, or the disappearance within history. 'Peripeteia' uses early depictions of Black individuals in Western art, such as Albrecht Dürer's portraits, as a starting point to explore the fate of these figures and reimagine their stories, highlighting how Black identities are vulnerable to oblivion, reflected in art history's marginalization of Black imagery. 'Mnemosyne' examines the stories of post-war immigrants in Britain, structured into nine chapters dedicated to muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Akomfrah reassembles archival footage to question the nature of memory and promote a historiography that incorporates personal and collective remembrance, juxtaposing historical film with shots of Black individuals in unexpected, snowy landscapes, underscoring experiences of dislocation and loss of grounding, and re-evaluating Western cultural history from a migrant perspective.

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