Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023) (EMPIRE LINES at 100 x The Box, Sharjah Biennial 15)

For EMPIRE LINES’ 100th episode, we join artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah to journey the Columbian Exchange, connecting continents from the 15th century, and contemporary port cities from Plymouth to Sharjah and Venice. The Columbian Exchange refers to the widespread transfer of plants, animals, goods, and people between the Americas, Afro-Eurasia and Europe - or the ‘Old’ and ‘New World’ - since the 1400s. With five screens, Arcadia considers these layered, overlapping journeys, travelling across stormy seas and sublime, epic landscapes. But these histories are also ‘interrupted’ with symbolic images of trade, disease, and smallpox, highlighting the fatal, often ‘genocidal’, nature of colonial encounters.

Artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah talks about his intersectional, environmentally-engaged films, comparing previous works like Purple (2017) to this first ‘post-human project’. He connects historic viruses - often represented by Indigenous cultures in vivid oral and visual sources like Aztec codexes and ‘plague journals’ - with his experience producing during the COVID pandemic. Drawing on his work with the Black Audio Film Collective, John shares his collaborative, ‘democratic’ approach to filmmaking. And, 400 years since the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth to transport the Pilgrims to North America, we discuss the meaning of Arcadia’s immersive cinematic display for the port city today.

John Akomfrah: Arcadia runs at The Box in Plymouth runs at The Box in Plymouth until 2 June 2024. He will represent Great Britain at the Venice Biennale 2024⁠ in Italy from 20 April to 24 November 2024.

For more on water and migration on film, hear Barbican curator Eleanor Nairne on Julianknxx’s Chorus in Rememory of Flight (2023), on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1792f53fa27b8e2ece289b53dd62b2b7

For more on sublime landscapes, listen to photographer David Sanya on the EMPIRE LINES episode about Lagos Soundscapes, Emeka Ogboh (2023): pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d

WITH: Sir John Akomfrah CBE RA, British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator of Ghanaian descent. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982-1998), and now Smoking Dogs Films, with works including The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work recently on display at Tate Britain. Arcadia (2023), which premiered at the Sharjah Biennial 15 in the United Arab Emirates, is co-commissioned by The Box, Plymouth, Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam, and Sharjah Art Foundation.

ART: ‘Arcadia, John Akomfrah (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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