"The archive comes to us with a set of Janus-faced possibilities. It says, "I existed at one point and it’s possible that I could exist differently"" - John Akomfrah.

John Akomfrah’s poetic and political cinematic treatment of black visual culture, memory and identities is steeped in the archive. Spaces of Intervention: Akomfrah & The Archive explores the politics and aesthetics of John Akomfrah’s filmic practice: his methodological commitment to a dialectical philosophy of montage and his subversive use of archives for memory-(re)making and for challenging hegemonic representations.

The seminar is conceived, curated and chaired by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ian McDonald from Newcastle University. Ian and Alessandro Vincentelli, the curator of 'John Akomfrah: Ballasts of Memory’ show at the BALTIC, will introduce and contextualise Akomfrah's practice and the archive. A keynote lecture will be delivered by Dr James Harvey who will talk about John Akomfrah’s practice over the past four decades and discuss Akomfrah’s innovative and distinctive approach to the archive as “a space of intervention”. Dr Harvey is currently writing the first ever monograph exploring the film, TV and gallery work of John Akomfrah, which is contracted to Bloomsbury for a 2021 release.

The seminar will be followed by an exciting showcase of archive-led creative practice by renowned filmmakers and artists, including Julie Ballands & Taryn Edmonds, Tina Gharavi, Kate Sweeney, Ed Wainwright, James Davoll, John Bowers & Tim Shaw. These presentations, installations and live performances will act as a provocation and inspiration to audience members to rethink the potential of archives in their own creative practice / scholarly work.

Spaces of Intervention: Akomfrah & the Archive will conclude with a networking event with drinks and canapés hosted by Newcastle University's Institute for Creative Practice.

The event is followed by a rare screening of John Akomfrah's landmark documentary film 'Handsworth Songs' at the Star and Shadow cinema at 7.30pm. Tickets booked separately (https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/star-and-shadow-cinema/t-zdkaxm).

Spaces of Intervention: Akomfrah & The Archive is a Film Praxis seminar event organised by Dr Geetha Jayaraman at Film@CultureLab, Newcastle University. It is supported by Newcastle University's Institute for Creative Arts Practice and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and is timed to coincide with the closing week of the ‘John Akomfrah: Ballasts of Memory’ show at the BALTIC.

For more details contact Dr Ian McDonald, Director, Film@CultureLab: ian.mcdonald@ncl.ac.uk

PROGRAMME:

1.00 – 1.10: Ian McDonald & Alessandro Vincentelli

Introduction and Context: Reflections on John Akomfrah: Ballasts of Memory at the Baltic

1.10 – 2.30 Keynote Speaker: James Harvey

Spaces of Intervention:

Politics, Aesthetics and Archives in the films of John Akomfrah

2.30 – 2.45 intermission

2.45 – 5.10 Archive-led creative practice showcase

Part 1: Film

2.45 – 3.00: Julie Ballands & Taryn Edmonds. On ‘Archive for Change’

3.00 – 3.15: Tina Gharavi. On ‘Tribalism is Killing Us’

3.15 – 3.30: Q&A

Part 2: Place

3.35 – 3.50: Kate Sweeney. The ‘Open Clasp’ project

3.50 – 4.05: Ed Wainwright. ‘The Ghost of New Bridge’ project

4.05 – 4.20: Q&A

Part 3: Sound

4.25 – 4.40: James Davoll. Live performance of ‘Bound’

4.40 – 4.55: John Bowers & Tim Shaw. ‘Mythogeosonics’ - Live performance.

4.55 – 5.10: Q&A

Part 4: Drink

5.15 – 6.30 Networking – hosted by the Institute for Creative Arts Practice, Newcastle University

Part 5: Watch (recommended)

7.30 – Star & Shadow screening of Handsworth Songs (1986, 58 mins)

Details below. Tickets can be booked separately here:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/star-and-shadow-cinema/t-zdkaxm

The Speakers (in order of appearance)

Dr Ian McDonald is a documentary filmmaker a Reader in Film Practice at Newcastle University. His previous films include the Grierson-nominated doc, Algorithms (23012 / 96mins) on blind chess players from India, and the multi-screen works FREEDOM (2017 / 4 channel / 20mins) winner of BAFTSS Practice Award and WHO IS EUROPE? (2019 / 2 channel / 30mins & 58mins) which has been shortlisted for the AHRC Best Research Film of the Year.

Alessandro Vincentelli is Curator of Exhibitions & Research at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, where he has worked for several years developing exhibitions with many artists including Steve McQueen, Yoko Ono, Bob & Roberta Smith, Raqs Media Collective, Elizabeth Price, Rodney Graham and Jasmina Cibic amongst others. He is the curator of John Akomfrah: Ballasts of Memory.

Dr James Harvey is a Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Sussex. His research focuses on the politics and aesthetics of contemporary global art cinema and artists' film. In 2018, his first monograph - Jacques Ranciere and the Politics of Art Cinema - was published by Edinburgh University Press, and his edited collection - Nationalism in Contemporary Western European Cinema - was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Dr Harvey has written and presented widely on Akomfrah’s practice, most notably a penetrating critique of the essay-film Nine Muses. His most recent article ‘Engaged observationalism: forming publics in the gallery film’ (Studies in European Cinema, 2019) addresses the politics of ‘socially engaged art’ that is also evident in Akomfrah’s work. He is currently writing the monograph committed to the film, TV and gallery work of John Akomfrah, which is contracted to Bloomsbury for a 2021 release.

Julie Ballands & Taryn Edmonds: Julie is a filmmaker and is currently working at the North East Film Archive, curating and editing regional archive material for place-specific screenings and for online. Taryn works across moving image and photography, weaving a documentary approach with installation and live elements to explore the socio-political relationship connecting people and place. Julie and Taryn will present Archive for Change, a critical collection of new and archive films that explore ideas of home, place and change in Newcastle’s West End. Inhabiting the space between art installation, documentary film and traditional archive, the project offers visitors a non-linear narrative of this place across time and from multiple perspectives.

Dr Tina Gharavi is a BAFTA and Sundance-nominated writer/director based at Newcastle University. Her debut feature, I Am Nasrine (2012) was nominated for a BAFTA. She’s a showrunner, now engaged developing several projects as well as her first TV series, an Icelandic detective noir with an intriguing twist.Tina will talk about her newest film, TRIBALISM IS KILLING US (TIKU) - an archive-based essay film about our shared past and an examination of the intransigent prejudice of racism and its insidious effect on human life.

Kate Sweeney is an artist and researcher producing video, photography, and animation. For the last three years she has undertaken a PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, working with archive materials stored at The Robinson Library. Kate will present video work produced as part of a collaborative archiving project on the Newcastle-based Women's Theatre Company, Open Clasp, whose archive is deposited at Newcastle University.

Dr Ed Wainwright is a lecturer in architecture at Newcastle University. His research explores the intersections of architecture and culture, especially architectures’ relationship to fine art and spatial experience. Through a form of ‘rescue archaeology’ Ed explores the production of affective states through digital representation and spatial installation practices in his project, the Ghosts of New Bridge – A Haunted Spatial Archive.

James Davoll is an artist/ film maker whose practice explores specific landscapes asking questions of their contemporary role, relevance and our emotive response to them. Much of his recent work focusses on the intersection of the visual and sonic landscape. James will be performing live visuals and sounds from his ongoing regenerative archive exploring the Irish Border,

Professor John Bowers & Dr Tim Shaw: John is an artist-researcher based at Newcastle University who works, amongst other things, as a sound artist improvising with electronic, acoustic and other devices in performance and installation settings. Tim is a sound artist based at Newcastle University with a particular interest in the relationship between site, sound and technologies. John and Tim often collaborate and have evolved a practice they call Mythogeosonics - a practice for recording, responding to and reordering diverse places and spaces through sound walking, installation-making and improvised performance. Utilising their own extensive personal archives, John and Tim will perform an archival collage, exploring their archives using idiosyncratic classification systems, self-made software, modular synthesis, a rostrum camera, sound objects and various DIY technologies.