Download Free John Akomfrah Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online John Akomfrah and write the review.

The films of John Akomfrah represent one of the most significant bodies of artistic production in the post-war era in Britain, yet little attempt has been made to analyse the consistencies and divergences across them. James Harvey's John Akomfrah is the first comprehensive analytic engagement with these films, offering sustained close engagement with the artist's core thematic preoccupations and aesthetic tendencies. His analysis negotiates the contextual and theoretical layers of Akomfrah's rich and complex films, from the intermedial diaspora aesthetics of Handsworth Songs (1986) to the intersectional spatial ecopolitics of Purple (2017). Positioning Akomfrah in the burgeoning black British arts and cultural scene of the 1980s as a member of Black Audio Film Collective, Harvey traces the evolution of a critical relationship with the postcolonial archive in his early films, through analysis of documentaries made for television in the 1990s and up to more recent film installations in museums and galleries.
This catalog is the first monographic publication to survey the work of London-based artist John Akomfrah (born 1957) and accompanies his upcoming New Museum exhibition. Since the early 1980s, Akomfrah's moving image works have offered some of the most rigorous and expansive reflections on the culture of the black diaspora. Zoe Whitley and Aram Moshayedi survey Akomfrah's early work as part of Black Audio Film Collective. Tina Campt explores the sonic resonances of Akomfrah's installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), which focuses on the life of cultural theorist Stuart Hall. Diana Nawi examines the recent work Transfigured Night (2013/2018), considering how Akomfrah continues to find new languages for film, representation and narrative. T.J. Demos and Okwui Enwezor look at Vertigo Sea (2015), Akomfrah's monumental work exploring the concept of the black Atlantic, using the work to articulate the visual and philosophical underpinnings of Akomfrah's work across his career.
Across three decades the American artist and cinematographer, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, USA) has developed a dynamic, multidisciplinary practice ranging from films and installations to lecture-performances and happenings that tackle, challenge and question prevailing cultural assumptions about identity and race.Jafa's work is driven by a recurrent question: how might one identify and develop a specifically Black visual aesthetics equal to the 'power, beauty and alienation' of Black music in American culture?Building upon Jafa's image-based practice, this enormous new volume comprises a series of visual sequences that are cut and juxtaposed across its pages. The artist has been collecting and working from a set of source books since the 1990s, seeking to trace and map unwritten histories and narratives relating to black life.Punctuating this visual material is a series of commissioned texts partnered with a rich compendium of essays, short stories and poetry that has informed Jafa's artistic practice and which together form an unprecedented resource.With over 30 contributors including: art critic Dave Hickey, philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, award-winning British artist John Akomfrah, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Als.Published after the exhibition, Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions at Serpentine Galleries, London (8 June - 10 September 2017), and at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (11 February - 25 November 2018).
Through 140 drawings, thought experiments, recipes, activist instructions, gardening ideas, insurgences and personal revolutions, artists who spend their lives thinking outside the box guide you to a new worldview; where you and the planet are one. Everything here is new. We invite you to rip out pages, to hang them up at home, to draw and scribble, to cook, to meditate, to take the book to your nearest green space. Featuring Olafur Eliasson, Etel Adnan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jane Fonda & Swoon, Judy Chicago, Black Quantum Futurism Collective, Vivienne Westwood, Cauleen Smith, Marina Abramovic, Karrabing Film Collective, and many more.
What do we mean when we say that something is contemporary? And what should the designator contemporary art refer to? What constitutes the present present or the contemporary contemporary? Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art, the first book in the Contemporary Condition series, introduces key issues concerning contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present and calls for a deep rethinking of the structures of temporalization.
"Now in its fourth iteration, Prospect New Orleans draws its inspiration from the city itself, a place of graceful beauty that thrives in adverse conditions. By positioning itself in the city of New Orleans, the Prospect triennial aims to echo the city's history of cross-cultural fertilization. From Creole culture to jazz, in waves of migration and colonization, and as the American South's largest port, New Orleans is truly a cultural and historic nexus. 'Prospect.4' plumbs New Orleans's richly hybrid character to offer a diverse and exhilarating panoply of new and exciting art. Exhibition: New Orleans (various venues), United States (11.11.2017-25.02.2018)"--
Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center Black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and Black freedom. Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra’s 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar “speculations” of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and Black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.
This “lucidly argued, historically grounded . . . and timely book” reexamines the relationship between black cultures, jazz music, and critical theory (Alexander G. Weheliye, Northwestern University). A sustained engagement with the work of Theodor Adorno, Jazz As Critique looks to jazz for ways of understanding the inadequacies of contemporary life. While Adorno's writings on jazz are notoriously dismissive, he has faith in the critical potential of some musical traditions. Music, he suggests, can provide insight into the controlling, destructive nature of modern society while offering a glimpse of more empathetic and less violent ways of being together in the world. Taking Adorno down a new path, Okiji calls attention to an alternative sociality made manifest in jazz. In response to writing that tends to portray it as a mirror of American individualism and democracy, she makes the case for jazz as a model of “gathering in difference.” Noting that this mode of subjectivity emerged in response to the distinctive history of black America, she reveals that the music cannot but call the integrity of the world into question.
This eagerly awaited book is the first to assess the oeuvre of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), one of Britain's most influential artistic groups. It reconsiders the entire corpus of the seven-person London-based group from inception in 1982 to its disbandment in 1998.
"Sankofa Film/Video Collective and Black Audio Film Collective are the most celebrated and controversial Black media groups to emerge from the British workshop movement of the 1980s. Their work focuses on the representation of the Black subject in mainstream and alternative media, also touching on such issues as institutionalized racism, sexual politics and national identity in postcolonial Britain. Challenging stylistic conventions of both documentary and fiction film, their work provides a basis for critical reflection on the history of Black film culture, Third CInema, and their future directions."--Back cover.