Study Day Anticolonial Thinking on Archives, Water and Climate Justice

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As part of the public programme for the British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, iniva presents Unseen Guests, a commission of eight artists based in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) working across new media, audiovisual and writing, with the aim to create new works in dialogue with the films of artist John Akomfrah.

Developing new commissions are the artists Ibiye Camp, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gladys Kalichini, Rodrigo Nava Ramirez, Shamica Ruddock and Helena Uambembe, alongside writers Yaa Addae and Alexis G. Tayie. They will be joined for the day by Matteo Stocco of the Metagoon project, and Maria Madeira, featured artist of the inaugural pavilion for Timor-Leste. 

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The Unseen Guests Study Day in Venice will bring together iniva’s commissioned artists and Venice’s scholarly and visual arts community. It will facilitate a shared exploration of climate justice and anticolonial thinking, putting particular emphasis on diverse forms of archival research with relevance to the theme of water. 

The Unseen Guests group of artists and writers have been working together with Pan-African cultural archives throughout the UK and SSA, investigating documentations of anticolonial events and testimonies of climate change. By bridging conversations that depart from diverse perspectives, the Study Day will become a catalyst for forging lasting connections and networks while fostering future collaborations within and beyond the event. It is designed to allow for collaborative reflections and investigations of John Akomfrah’s contribution to the British Pavilion, while approaching the wider context and themes of the Venice Biennale.

As part of the cultural programme to accompany in the context of the British Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, with the support of British Council and Arts Council England, the Unseen Guests Study Day in Venice is presented by iniva, in collaboration with NICHE and the UNESCO Chair at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Department of Art History at The Open University (United Kingdom).

Full programme 

An overall prompt for the day has been informed by the Listening All Night to the Rain exhibition guide:

“Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting.” – CHOOSING THE MARGIN AS A SPACE OF RADICAL OPENNESS (1989), BELL HOOKS (1952- )

“We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone.” – POETICS OF RELATION (1990), ÉDOUARD GLISSANT (1928-2011)

“Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.” – SILENT SPRING (1962), RACHEL CARSON (1907-64)

Considering “water as a reservoir for memory: a site where narratives from the past, present and future are held”* and the “power of memory in determining our future”*, we invite contributors to imagine and respond to the ways in which anticolonial thinking may utilise the archive** to identify connecting tissues of shared histories, in order to address the multiple crises of our times. 

*quotes from ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ curatorial text
**an expanded conceptualisation of the archive (textual, visual and material; embodied, felt and collective; post- and more-than-human)

11:00-12:15 Water and climate justice – Pietro Consolandi (Facilitator); Ibiye Camp; Rodrigo Nava Ramirez; Yaa Addae; Matteo Stocco

In 1990, the Kogi group of Colombia warned the world about climate disaster in the BBC documentary From the Heart of the World. Akomfrah’s commission serves as a stark reminder that our past experiences have forewarned us about the present challenges we face globally. Underscoring the interconnectedness between military conflicts and ecological devastation – from ecocide to ecoterrorism – the artist reveals the inalterable impact on our environment.  (Canto VII)

How can artists work with communities to support the global drive toward climate justice? What material, geographical, temporal and creative challenges may artists face in the process, and according to what timeframes and geographies?

12:15 – 13:15  Lunch Break

13:15 – 14:30 Anticolonial Struggle & Pan-African Thinking – Leon Wainwright (Facilitator), Helena Uambembe; Maria Madeira; Amarildo Ajasse.

The exhibition captures pivotal moments in the history of colonised countries, namely the independence movements and rebellions that swept across Africa and Asia during the period of the 1940-70s. […] The artist approaches these narratives through the lens of the diasporic community in Britain, intertwining personal memories with the collective consciousness of those displaced by political crises in order to highlight the interconnectedness of enduring legacies of colonialism. (Canto VI)

How can artists utilise anticolonial and pan-African thought to offer an effective contribution to address the interconnectedness and enduring legacies of colonialism? What tools and strategies could we employ to create and sustain legacies for continental and diasporic communities?

14:30 – 15:45 Archival research and water as archive – Cristina Baldacci (Facilitator), Shamica Ruddock; Nolan Oswald Dennis; Gladys Kalichini; Alexis G Teyie.

The exhibition weaves together newly filmed material from around the world with found still images, video footage, audio clips and texts from international archive collections and libraries. Akomfrah juxtaposes these documented geopolitical narratives with imagined tableaux – often surreal or dreamlike in nature, in order to reposition the role of art in its ability to write history in unexpected ways, forming critical and poetic connections between different geographies and time periods. (Curatorial introduction)

Taking into view an expanded conceptualisation of the archive (textual, visual and material; embodied, felt and collective; post and more-than-human), how can artists utilise archives to address the multiple crises of the present day? How can the concept of ‘water as archive’ support critical and poetic connections in the writing, remembering, and retelling of histories? 

15:45 – 16:00 Closing remarks – Sepake Angiama

About the partners:

iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) is an evolving visual arts organisation dedicated to nurturing and disseminating radical and emergent contemporary artistic practice centring Global Majority, African, Asian, & Caribbean diaspora perspectives. For 30 years it has been iniva’s mission to be an agent for change in the cultural sector, advocating for social justice through the support of artists and communities as well as via the forms of exchange that advance our desire to understand each other and respect the cultural values that challenge cultural ‘norms’. 

THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice aims to produce transdisciplinary environmental scholarship and public engagement initiatives where environmental humanities can play a major role. From the unique vantage point of Venice, a city vulnerable to sea-level rise but also a living laboratory for a balanced ecosystem and a plural global community, NICHE fosters dialogue between leading scholars, scientific innovators, artists and writers, journalists and public stakeholders for a new alliance between humanities, social life, and natural sciences, with a local and global impact. With a strong focus on water, NICHE critically engages with waterscapes by pioneering the new methodologies necessary for challenging perceptions of water and relevant political decision-making. 

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY‘s  Department of Art History at The Open University is one of the UK’s largest communities of students and specialists in the history of art and visual cultures at the intersections of anti-/post-colonial thought and climate justice, with particular expertise in art and ecologies of the majority world over a wide historical span. Taking a critical and transdisciplinary approach, the group builds on the pioneering work of the pre-eminent intellectual Stuart Hall, who was Professor of Sociology at the Open University. The Open University partnership is led by Professor Leon Wainwright from the OU on the occasion of his visiting scholarship at NICHE.