The Jurisgenerativity of a Liquid Praxis: a Conversation with John
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Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article-pdf/5/1/127/919908/127raengo.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 FIGURE 1. John Akomfrah, Precarity (2017). Three- channel HD color video installation, 7.1 sound, 46 minutes 3 seconds. © Smoking Dogs Films. Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery. 127 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article-pdf/5/1/127/919908/127raengo.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 ohn Akomfrah (b. 1957, Ghana; based in Lon- The Jurisgenerativity don) is one of the most prolific and influen- Jtial multiscreen installation artists working on of a Liquid Praxis themes of diaspora identity and cultural flows, post- coloniality, migration and refugeeship, and the inex- A Conversation tricable links between processes of racialization and the violence of the Capitalocene. Through a thirty- with John Akomfrah five- year career, Akomfrah has worked nimbly, cre- atively, and uninhibitedly in a variety of modes in and out of gallery spaces, including theatrically released Introduced and Interviewed by feature film and made- for- TV documentary. Yet his ALESSANDRA RAENGO distinctive intellectual errantry, or “migrant practice,” has attracted substantial global attention mostly in the last decade, since his return to the art world proper with large- scale multiscreen installations such as The Unfinished Conversation (three channels, HD, 2012) and his contribution to the 2015 Venice Bi- ennale, Vertigo Sea (three channels, HD).1 Overall, through his body of work, numerous interviews, and writings, he has contributed one of the most genera- tive philosophies of black diasporic lens- based work to date. Initially known for his groundbreaking experi- mental documentary work with the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) he cofounded in 1982, and most especially for two films that are being intensely revis- ited since the death of George Floyd and the current international resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement — Handsworth Songs (1986) and The Last Angel of History (1995) — Akomfrah’s more recent installations deal with “impossible to retrieve” mo- ments and sites and/or pursue questions spurred by liquid blackness ■ ■ 5:1 ■ ■ April 2021 DOI 10.1215/26923874-8932645 ■ ■ © 2021 Alessandra Raengo This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article-pdf/5/1/127/919908/127raengo.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 sometimes unexpected encounters.2 Peripeteia (sin- gle channel, 2012) imagines the lives of two African I AM VERY INVESTED IN figures found in drawings by Albrecht Dürer;Trans - figured Night (two channels, HD, 2013), inspired by THIS ALMOST CRIMINAL Arnold Schönberg’s composition, explores the “con- ACT OF INVENTING PASTS dition of narcolepsy” befalling Ghana’s early postco- lonial moment; Tropikos (single channel, HD, 2015) “Afro- fabulates” the first contacts between the Brit- ish and Africans; while Auto da Fé (two channels, HD, allowed to fulfill their intrinsic narcissism, their natural 2016), on religious persecution, was prompted by the self- possession.5 discovery of a Jewish cemetery in Barbados. Precar- While many of the works just described explore ity (three channels, HD, 2017) stages the archival lack the past, and particularly the early modern period, that surrounds Charles “Buddy” Bolden, the legend- Vertigo Sea, Purple (six channels, HD, 2017, commis- ary father of New Orleans jazz; and Mimesis: African sioned by the Barbican Curve), and Four Nocturnes Soldier (three channels, 2018) celebrates colonial sub- (three channels, HD, 2019, presented at the 2019 Ven- jects’ contributions to World War I.3 ice Biennale for the inaugural Ghana pavilion) are In all of these instances and many others, Akom- part of a trilogy devoted to the destructive and self- frah plunges into the anaoriginarity of black archives destructive impulses that underlie the Anthropocene, by magnifying their jurisgenerative power: their ca- and they focus primarily on the impact of this long pacity to create, and to constantly renew, aesthetic durée on the present. But this does not make them forms.4 To be clear, in the overwhelming majority of less archival or less jurisgenerative: only the scale has these cases, these archives are not even such; that is, changed. As essay films, they take a stance within the they are not properly archives, and they might not ap- most cutting- edge conversations in the environmen- pear jurisgenerative until Akomfrah’s work of “brico- tal humanities and new materialism by unequivocally lage” has fully occurred. Bricolage here stands for the claiming the geologic dimensions and texture of ra- collective and networked research that sustains every cialization.6 At the same time, they are majestic and project, for the premise that has to be formulated for audacious “atonal” symphonies of original and archi- the work to achieve a measure of unity, and for the val fragments, always held in productive tension so capacious concept of montage Akomfrah has devel- that each can “speak” its place — fulfill its entelechy, oped throughout his practice: a search for “affective as Akomfrah puts it — in these newly created precari- proximities” between previously isolated fragments, ous and open- ended ecosystems. (See fig. 2, from the which acquire value, voice, and singularity if they are six- channel installation Purple.) RAENGO ■■ The Jurisgenerativity of a Liquid Praxis 129 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article-pdf/5/1/127/919908/127raengo.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 FIGURE 2. John Akomfrah, Purple (2017). Six- channel HD color video installation with 15.1 surround sound, dimensions variable, 62 minutes. Exhibition: Thyssen- Borneeemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. © Smoking Dogs Films. Photograph by Alexey Narodizkiy. Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Ultimately, it is only after Akomfrah’s jurisgenera- reason, back in 2014, the very young liquid blackness tive gathering — his specific curatorial act, in the sense research group applied for a grant that would allow I’ll explain momentarily — that all of these archives us to bring to Atlanta the entire BAFC output and appear as such, while also constantly pointing back watch it over two consecutive weekends.8 After hav- to their anaoriginarity, the sheer impossibility of their ing hosted the “L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black coming together before this initial call to gather with American Cinema” film series, we wanted to study a the promise that, under the right circumstances, each formal collective that, similar to the way the L.A. Re- fragment is going to be heard.7 bellion had done as an informal collective, put the I approached Akomfrah for this inaugural issue politics of aesthetics at the center of their practice. At of liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black the time, however, we didn’t know that the collective’s studies first because BAFC’s collective praxis was the informality was the source of its groundbreaking cre- 130 liquid blackness ■■ 5:1 ■■ April 2021 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/liquid-blackness/article-pdf/5/1/127/919908/127raengo.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 ativity and its radical openness to formal experimen- tation, despite the group’s constant negotiations with THE JOURNEY OF THE the mechanisms of public funding. More importantly, I approached Akomfrah also POLYRHYTHMIC: YOU because the language of liquidity had begun to CAN HEAR IT ACROSS emerge in his work, in intertitles or section titles, for example, in Precarity and Purple, and as what in this THE PLANET interview he describes as a “guiding trope.” Without overdetermining our conversation, I was interested in finding out whether he would agree that, in some might assert itself as yet another crucial component way, liquidity had been present throughout his prac- that has to harmonize with the work itself.9 tice in at least a few ways. Second, Akomfrah’s long- standing commitment First, liquidity might describe the specific revers- to free jazz as an inspirational aesthetics of mixing, ibility between aesthetics, practice, and praxis his improvisation, and open- endedness is another way “ensemble” had carried out since BAFC. I wondered he can be regarded as practicing the liquidity of the if the inspiration for his errant practice and the pursuit black arts, in the way Toni Morrison explains it, as of a form “without guarantees” might be due to the the understanding and practicing of one in terms of jurisgenerativity of the ensemble itself, since BAFC the other.10 Not only were conversations about the had always sought ways of inscribing collectivity into role of black sound and black music central to his col- form (or perhaps make work whose form would al- laboration with Arthur Jafa as the cinematographer ways index the collectivity that had produced it) and for Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993) (fig. 3), but the therefore the politics of sociality into aesthetics. This, secret technology at the heart of The Last Angel of in turn, explains Akomfrah’s commitment to main- History is precisely the blues.11 taining the collectivity of the process — which he dis- Liquidity can also be a way to think about the un- cusses in his answer to my question about his current inhibited agnosticism and radical intellectual errancy praxis — and his faithfulness to the idea of