th e n i n e m us es (di r ec ted by j o h n ako m fr ah , 2010, s m o ki n g dogs fi lm s), fr am e g r ab .

LB IMAGE For Article The work of the Black Audio Specifically, I argue that films in Last Angel, and Miles Davis’ jazz understands them. Avery Gordon man in question is haunted, in part Film Collective (BAFC) has been such as The Last Angel of History operates as commemorative filament writes: “If haunting describes how by his generally unfulfilled desires poetically recalled as “the ghosts (John Akomfrah, 1995), Digitopia throughout The Stuart Hall Project. that which appears to be not there for a prostitute named Tanya, and The Ghosts of songs” in a gallery retrospective (John Akomfrah, 2001), The Nine is often a seething presence, acting in part by broader affective and Further, Akomfrah’s work posits and subsequent critical anthology.1 Muses (John Akomfrah, 2010), on and often meddling with taken- conceptual states—tensions between of John These titular “songs” vastly exceed and The Stuart Hall Project (John radical philosophies of history for-granted realities, the ghost is just analog and digital, the socius and the their primary denotation; hence, they Akomfrah, 2013) engage the sonic and time founded on the present- the sign, or the empirical evidence if collective, humans and nature—that are also stories, forgotten histories, and the musical as both affective absence of Africana peoples within you like, that tells you a haunting is constitute the dense combination of the archive. The director’s oeuvre Akomfrah diaphanous traces of memories, implements of memory and taking place.”2 Thus, ghosts haunt history and subjectivity that Gordon and, especially, images and sounds structural-theoretical scaffolding treats history and time as disjunctive, us—they do things—affectively characterizes as modern social quarried from the impossible archives for cultural production. While sound imbricated and nonlinear; therefore marking their presence and founding life. Digitopia uses sound—ticking of the black diaspora. While the and music are constitutive flows making them available for remixing, modern social life by pulling us “into clocks; blowing wind; street noise; collective disbanded in 1998, such within the archive, they also leak improvisation, and reconfiguration. To the structure of feeling of a reality and especially phone conversations, ghosts continue to vex the work of through its seams. This seepage put it differently, the future is in the we come to experience, not as cold which are the primary, technologically Charles P. “Chip” pioneering director John Akomfrah, results from both sonic/musical past is in the present, and all are open knowledge, but as a transformative distanciated mode of interaction to, or in dire need of, re-vision. John Linscott who, along with co-producers representational ambiguity and the recognition.”3 Ghosts, then, come between the man and his unrequited and former BAFC members David irregular attention paid to archival Akomfrah undertakes nothing less in myriad forms, and this essay lover—to express the alienation and Lawson and Lina Gopaul (Smoking sonicity. Regarding the former, sound than a reimagining of the aesthetics, looks at a few that persistently loneliness of contemporary existence. Dogs Films), consistently generates and music are representationally epistemologies, and ontologies of flit through Akomfrah’s art. The film juxtaposes images of natural groundbreaking experimental abstruse; they thus allow for a African-descended peoples—such sublimity (mountains, lakes, the sky) cinema. In this piece, I will probe vigorous, recombinant logic that are the specters that haunt his art, Digitopia sets the stage, outlining a and magnificent cityscapes with Akomfrah’s recent work at several incites the undoing of archival and which he haunts in return. This number of key concerns. Smoking the spectral life led by a man who, fundamental nodes—sonic/musical, codification and encourages myriad essay feels the ghosts as they pass. Dogs’ website describes the film as despite his “connectedness” through archival, and historico-temporal— regenerations. Hence, funk, hip-hop, a “drama about a man who lives in modern technology, is estranged. I understand Akomfrah’s work to an analogue world but seeks to fulfill all of which are grounded in and techno provide inspiration for take ghosts seriously, if not exactly Repeated shifts of Digitopia’s his desires in a digital world.”4 The iterations of the black diaspora. an Afrofuturist remixing of history in the way popular culture typically dominant chromaticism—ruddy,

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aquamarine, sepia, jade, and ashen ravages, even as his understanding a diasporic circulation from Africa nonlinearly—calls and responses cut- tones—do little to alter the somber of universal temporality to America to the United Kingdom. up and remixed. Not coincidentally, and unsettled tenor. At several points interpenetrates his quotidian The film gestures at blues form in the man’s final desperate plea is a during the voiceover, the man muses longings. He holds time in his hands, that it is haunted by sorrow and proposal for the two of them to flee philosophically on the potential but fails to grasp it (Figure 1). desire. Yet, Digitopia reaches back their lives in the United Kingdom for effects of universal contraction on into the archives of the black Atlantic a fresh start together in America. personal history: “If the universe In these ways, this short video diaspora for historically important This fraught attempt at transatlantic was contracting, she would be in epitomizes a concern with time and American blues music, using expatriation—a return to the my past.” In the end, neither the history that is the loam of much of these songs to configure its filmic birthplace of the blues—is brutally deep time of the universe and the Akomfrah’s work, especially insofar structure, affect, and signification. rejected. There will be no shelter, natural sublime, nor the humanist as his films and writings unsettle The film depicts the intense, no solace. In these ways, Akomfrah technological “conquest” of nature, linear temporality in favor of time emotionally charged unraveling of locates a trace of what is to come provides solace for a man who merely travel and the rewriting of history. In a relationship—the subject of much in the past, and a trace of what has wants to be loved. Time haunts particular, Akomfrah wants to shatter blues music—through multiple been in the future, a move that he him, but he cannot truly mitigate its the archive for its historically racist iterations of “call-and-response” repeats in a number of other works. exclusions and erasures, while also structure, or antiphony. With strong mining its images and sounds for roots in Africa, antiphony is of The brief haunting enacted by shards with which to piece together signal importance to most black archival blues songs in Digitopia history anew. This is sometimes an popular musics, including blues, jazz, becomes a grand gesture in Stuart understated procedure. Digitopia, Hall. Previously, in Nine Muses, (r i g ht) fi g u r e 1: gospel, rock, and hip-hop. The film’s for example, interweaves black Akomfrah employed graphic The frustrated lover narrative is in fact anchored by a American blues music from the onscreen titles marking different holds time in his hands telephonic call-and-response, as the early 20th Century (by Ramblin’ filmic sections, one for each of the di g ito pia male lover pleads with Tanya and is Thomas, Mississippi Fred McDowell, repeatedly rejected. While causal nine Greek goddesses of inspiration. (di r ec ted by j o h n ako m fr ah , 2001, and Charley Patton) to convey the That graphic practice continues here, s m o ki n g dogs fi lm s), fr am e g r ab . connections can be discerned, the affects of the forlorn lover and signify relationship’s trajectory is depicted but marks periods of Hall’s life in

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“When I was about nineteen or twenty, Miles Davis put his finger on my soul...”

(lef t) fi g u r e 2: Imbricated Layers: A photograph of young Stuart Hall is placed in front synchronization with periods of Miles the film and Hall’s life. Hall poetically sure, has such power; as Kodwo of a record player, which is spinning Davis’ music, which accompanies intones: “When I was about nineteen Eshun puts it: music maintains a Miles Davis album; both objects sit various filmic sections. For example, or twenty, Miles Davis put his finger a “despotic drive to crumple before a dreary cityscape viewed Miles’ Filles De Kilimanjaro 1968 on my soul…the various moods of chronology like an empty bag of through blurry windowpanes appears onscreen, announcing a Miles Davis matched the evolution crisps, to eclipse reality in its willful th e stuart hall proj ec t segment of early BBC appearances of my own feelings…and some exorbitance, to put out the sun.”5 (di r ec ted by j o h n ako m fr ah , 2013, and bits from Hall’s young career. of the nostalgia for what cannot s m o ki n g dogs fi lm s), fr am e g r ab . Such titles also tell us that the be is in the sound of Miles Davis’ Together, the diverse elements film is composed “entirely from trumpet.” Hence, the film is haunted of Stuart Hall form a dense [Hall’s] film, television, radio, and by “what cannot be”—lives not lived, orchestration of different tracks that photographic archives [along with] histories unrecorded, opportunities accrete into a deceptively complex musical fragments from his lifelong denied, promises broken, homes polyphony; it is, in other words, a film listening to Miles Davis.” This musical forgotten. This haunting is, in part, that demands careful and repeated accompaniment—the ghosts of songs, an affective mnemonic marked by close analysis. What Akomfrah again—is a signal element of both Miles Davis’ music. Music, to be and his partners have done is to raid a variety of archives in order

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to glean raw materials for a long- murky urban geography (the drab experience of diaspora and playing remix of personal biography, city outside the window); note that interminable transoceanic voyages wide-ranging history, political and both the photograph and vinyl album to and from various “homes.” cultural theory, and race—all intercut are archival means of preserving History is, as usual, chopped and with the affective and significatory ephemeral slivers of pastness in reorganized, with African-European powers of Miles Davis’ music. We mediatic form.6 Put differently, and African-American emigrations are thus tasked with simultaneously they both try to capture ghosts. and diasporic archival images/sounds unraveling a number of different at the fore. Ancient Greek history strands—or, if you will, of carefully Nine Muses is constituted by many and myth nestle beside this archival attending to several competing of the same elements that found footage, which in turn nudges the melodic lines at the same time. Digitopia and The Stuart Hall contemporary shots of mysterious, The film frequently cuts together Project. It is haunted by the ghosts largely obscured spectral figures, archival images, Hall’s voiceover and of the archive, like the latter film, covered head-to-toe in winter-proof interviews, archival sound recordings, but includes a great deal of new attire, including mirrored ski goggles. Davis’ music, and textual graphics, footage of fictional characters silently with no single element necessarily pondering tremendous natural Akomfrah’s characters here are predominating. Stuart Hall makes scenery, like the former film. And, keenly observant of the movements us aware of this intricacy within like most Akomfrah works, Nine the first few minutes of the film, Muses is experimental and complex, as it juxtaposes various visual and and can seem oblique at first. The film makes frequent allusions to sonic elements, each with differing (r i g ht) fi g u r e 3: Homer’s The Odyssey, and is divided affective and significatory valences. Vexed by Time and Distance: The In Figure 2, for instance, personal into sections corresponding to each of the nine muses, as mentioned mysterious émigré stands alone, history (Hall’s photo) forms a façade contemplating diminution, during in front of musical affect (Miles Davis’ above. The primary tension derives from exploration of the émigré’s an ocean voyage record), and both guard the way to th e n i n e m us es (di r ec ted by j o h n ako m fr ah , 2010, s m o ki n g dogs fi lm s), fr am e g r ab .

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“Akomfrah’s work deals with a several of the elements we have been hegemony. Akomfrah creates art granite and limestone cenotaphs. mourning or memorialization of exploring—ghosts, haunting, missing that marks, and then thinks through, Indeed, much of Akomfrah’s output or absent histories and people, the present-absence of blackness explores monumental ideas through interpenetrating temporalities—may in modernity. In this sense, his work the quotidian. As Akomfrah himself an impossible past...” be thought through the notion of is cenotaphic in that it attempts to writes, the films of both Black Audio the cenotaph. The etymology of memorialize—to call attention to— and Smoking Dogs often pursue the word “cenotaph” can be traced bodies that are perpetually absent an “impossible gesture, a desire back to two ancient Greek words in both senses: lack of physical to cease and entrap the ghost… that together mean “empty tomb.” presence and erasure from the to reconcile the facsimile and the Constructed all over the world for dominant archives. I maintain that real, history and myth.”7 These are the last two thousand years or this tendency memorializes bodies monuments to ghosts of the past, and circulations of capital, commerce, to the loquaciousness of the other segregation, and anti-black racism. more, cenotaphs take a variety of that may not be found at all, if they and to specters yet to materialize. peoples, and natural forces. They films examined here. Of course, After all, Mnemosyne, who gets architectural and artistic forms, were known to begin with; thus, sit, look, listen, and feel as these this is not to reduce all Africana her own section in the film, is the but share common purpose in Akomfrah’s work erects cenotaphs Finally, The Last Angel of History rhythms occur; yet we get the culture or subjectivity to a vestigial personification of memory. We are their public commemoration of the to an absent, if not lost, referent. is an experimental DigiBeta video impression that they, like the man in experience with slavery, but to call called to remember—to remember absent or missing dead. Here, this Yet, this cenotaphic tendency is essay (and the only film in this article Digitopia before them, are dwarfed for acknowledgement of the marks unheard voices, to remember matters because much of Akomfrah’s differently inflected in Akomfrah’s produced by Black Audio) with in the face of such heft (Figure 3). and scars that many individuals things that have yet to occur, to work deals with a mourning or work than it is in global monuments. both a fictional narrative arc and and communities bear, explicitly remember even that which we memorialization of an impossible past This is especially the case insofar copious use of creatively treated Alluding to the long transoceanic and implicitly; it is to remind of have never experienced in the talking head interview footage, voyages that initiated portions of in the midst of an uncertain future. as Akomfrah creates audiovisual the persistence of lost or deferred first place, to remember ghosts. That is, Akomfrah’s films frequently works (films, videos, installations) primarily of figures associated with the African diaspora, the mysterious histories, from both enslavement the Afrofuturist canon (if there figures spend much time on or near These “impossible” acts— mine the archive to explore what that are by definition ephemeral and diasporic dispersal, and how so often remains hidden, or that and reflect the aforementioned is such a thing) including George the sea, but they never seem to those forces work in concert remembering the unknown, Clinton, DJ Spooky, Greg Tate, speak. Their embodied voicelessness hearing the unspoken, seeing the which is assumed to be “lost,” reconceptualization of time, contra with the cultural, political, and Octavia Butler, and so on.8 Following is a structuring absence in Nine invisible—pervade Akomfrah’s films. namely, Afro-diasporic lives and the monumental attempts at economic legacies of slavery, histories put under erasure by white permanence and fixity found in the adventures of a time-traveling Muses, particularly in comparison Accordingly, I want to suggest that hero from the future known as the

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“Data Thief,” Last Angel explores come together: Data Thief’s quest, of black people’s potentially computer placed slightly off-center, that black people were the first the fecund theoretical implications the film itself, and the music/figures extraterrestrial origins—while or on multiple screens scattered astronomers and mathematicians in of the music, art, literature, and with which the film is concerned are attempting to construct a future that throughout the frame, forming an the world; hence, the “future-past- criticism surrounding Afrofuturism. all foundationally archaeological; may yet come out of the materials infinite regress of frames. Images present” vortex is transposed to Much of the focus is on the music they are attempts to uncover and presently at hand (Figure 4). and sounds flash and rapidly cut his NASA work. As the descendant and its performance/performativity, reconstruct a history that has either in and out—photographs, artwork, of ancient African astronomers, he “He wanted highlighting music’s conceptual and been written out, or was never The Data Thief’s archaeological archival documents, and scientific describes himself as their “son,” theoretical potency, or, as Shana written originally. The quest is met expedition soon uncovers “Africa,” sketches from African and Afro- returning from space (and the future) Redmond puts it, music is a method, by remixing, by time travelling, by which he reasons is the source diasporic history are rapidly intercut to show what has been accomplished. recognition “a complex system of mean(ing)s and rewriting and reactivating history of “science fiction,” an originary with interview footage and the In the film, all of this is remixed with ends that mediate our relationships through experimentation, through form rooted in the African use sci-fi mélange of the Data Thief’s myriad rapidly intercut images from that black to one another, to space, to our sonic, musical, and audiovisual theory of “drums to cover distance.” Or, quest. The inclusion in Last Angel Ghana—a ghost from the future, histories and historical moment… and praxis. It’s a future-past, with we might say, Last Angel locates of pioneering African-American visiting ghosts from the past, set the origins of science fiction (and, people were [and] to new political modalities.”9 seeds in the present—funk uncut. astronaut Bernard Harris gestures to a soundtrack from outer space. Of course this is idealistic, but, as of course, Afrofuturism) in the toward the Pan-Africanism that In Last Angel, the Data Thief receives Eshun suggests in the film, so are musical-communicative collapsing gained such traction in much of Foundationally, Akomfrah is the first clues about the past: the “black the musics at issue here, including of time and space, or drumming postcolonial Africa and in Civil Rights imagining possible worlds—past, secret technology” of the blues, the the Detroit techno that takes its cues as the attenuation of space-time. movements in America. Harris, an present, and future—in an era that astronomers...” “Mothership Connection” of George from Afrofuturist pioneers Sun Ra, Akomfrah’s formal innovation yet avid science fiction and Parliament desperately needs it. He persistently Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, George Clinton, and Lee “Scratch” again matches the complexity of his fan, brought along an African returns to the demand for re- and the like. Only in the past, it Perry. These are all “impossible thematic concerns. At times, sounds “composite” flag on his first NASA envisioning and rewriting history seems, can our future-hero find the musics” that “imagine the future” and voices are heavily effected— space flight—a flag which included precisely because whiteness has answers he seeks, and the past he is rather than reflecting the past, or, reverb, phasing, delay—and talking all of the flags of all the countries in spent centuries becoming invisible, revisiting was in fact already living we might say, they imagine a past head interview footage is often Africa at the time of the voyage—as a normalizing itself at unfathomable in the future when he arrived back which may have been—such as shown on a screen-within-the- salute to his Afro-diasporic heritage. cost. As Isaac Julien and Kobena in time. Thus, many of our themes Clinton and Ra’s fantastic invocation screen, displayed on an old personal As Harris says, he wanted recognition Mercer contend (with nods to Stuart

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Hall and Gayatri Spivak) this process that audiences think—but they are threshold of consciousness for days proceeds through “the epistemic also visceral, presenting audiovisual after contact. They are very much like violence that has, historically, material that is immediately ghosts, then, persistently challenging disavowed difference in Western affective. Like a chill down the the conventional and calling us to discourses.”10 So, these monuments spine, Akomfrah’s films move us hear, see, and otherwise sense the to ghosts obviously work upon directly while leaving behind vexing potentially transformative possibilities whiteness as well—exorcising it and questions—thoughts lingering on the of existence as best we can. drawing it out into the light, where it can be properly seen. Indeed, as blackness hovers throughout the BAFC and Akomfrah’s work, it is variously mobilized to recall, rethink, recreate; to tear down and build up again; to critique; to question; and to dream. In their oblique, even opaque (re)configurations of sounds and images, these films insist upon deliberate reflection—they demand

1 Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar, eds., The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of the Black Audio Film Collective 1982–1998 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007). 2 Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, New ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 8. 3 Ibid., 7–8. 4 “Digitopia,” Smoking Dogs Films, http://www.smokingdogsfilms.com/filmDigit.htm. (r i g ht) fi g u r e 4: 5 Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (London: Quartet, 1998), -004. Eshun’s idiosyncratic pagination in this book indicates that page -004 The Data Thief’s Remix: “Surfing across the should be understood as the fourth page of his introduction. internet of black culture, breaking in…and 6 Both Fred Moten and Alexander Weheliye produce innovative theorizations of blackness and “pastness in mediatic form” in their respective texts. See Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and Alexander G. Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity stealing fragments” (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). th e l a st an g el o f h isto ry 7 John Akomfrah, “Digitopia and the Spectres of Diaspora,” Journal of Media Practice 11, no. 1 (2010): 27. (di r ec ted by j o h n ako m fr ah , 1995, 8 Kara Keeling suggests that the film is, in fact, engaging in the process of creating an Afrofuturist canon. At this point, the film would also then be part of such a canon. Kara Keeling, “Introduction to The Last Angel of History” (Atlanta: BAFC Film and Speakers Series, Georgia State University, October 3, 2014). b l ack au dio fi lm co llec tive), fr am e g r ab . 9 Shana L. Redmond, Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 1. 10 Isaac Julien and Kobena Mercer, “De Margin and De Centre,” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London: Routledge, 1996), 456.

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