For decades, Ghanaian-British filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah has been one of the leading anti-colonial voices in cinema. A founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, he explored black life in Britain and beyond through works that seem loose and conversational in their editing but shrill in their observations. In recent years, his installation work, such as sea of vertigo, addressed large-scale ideas around humanity’s relationship to the environment.
In 2017, Akomfrah created Purple, his largest installation to date, at the Barbican. Playing across six gargantuan screens, it combines both archival material and original documentary footage as part of a sweeping investigation into the effects of climate change on the environment. After being shown in various institutions around the world, in 2021 the piece was jointly acquired by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. The film began its exhibition at the Hirshhorn in November 2022, and it will remain on view until 2023. Related to this exhibition, I sat down with Akomfrah on Zoom to discuss Purple, how his material speaks to him and what hope he has for the future.
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Hyperallergic: Did you start out wanting to do something about climate change, or did the larger concerns you were exploring lead you there?
Jean Akomfrah: It’s one of those chicken/egg questions, which are always important to me, because it’s only at the end that I’m able to unpack and understand where the genesis of things lies. I wouldn’t say that I started by trying to do something about climate change; I rarely try to do things that talk about things. But at some point, a logic appears.
When I spoke to the Barbican about a commission for [Barbican gallery] the Curve, I said I wanted to do something about my childhood, a vaguely autobiographical project. I knew it was going to be linked to carbon monoxide poisoning, because that was my experience of living in London in the 60s and 70s. And as I started pulling one tentacle, another appeared. It’s almost a musical composition in the form of a dirge – a cantata, if you will. And it seemed like a great idea to have several elements that we could then weave into a sort of symphonic whole. I was inexorably led to the theme of climate change by these different aspects. But no, I had no intention of doing anything about climate change itself.
H: Is this the kind of creative path your projects usually take? Does starting one thing lead you to something else, maybe even something completely different?
JA: I find it’s always about starting somewhere with a set of questions, and in the process of trying to answer those questions, either larger questions come up or some form of answer comes up. I follow all of this in a very off-the-cuff way like a jazz performer until it becomes clear that there’s something in place that’s going to be quote-unquote “about” this topic.
And that point usually doesn’t come until about three-quarters of the way there, by the way. I’m sitting in Venice now, working on a project, and I know pretty much – very, very roughly – where we’re going with this. I have an idea of the players, but no clear outline yet. At some point I’ll write something, a sort of visual bible of references and movies, just for me and my team. And even then, there won’t be absolute fidelity to this scenario; we will use it as a starting point. I like the arrival of the unexpected. The irruption of the unexpected is the most productive moment in the construction of a project.
H: Purple continues to emphasize nature in your recent works. You quoted Moby-Dick and JMW Turner as influences on Sea Vertigo. What influenced this one?
JA: I have read and watched all the usual, contemporary suspects like Wendell Berry and others. But I was drawn back to the past again, and I don’t know why. There are the writings of Thoreau; I think Purple started sprouting during a visit to Walden Pond. There is something about the 19th century and its vision of nature that I always find endearing and fascinating. At some point when we work on this theme, we have the impression that it is perhaps in vain because no one is necessarily listening. I always remember Rachel Carson, because she was definitely not listened to at all. She is therefore a good example to draw inspiration from when we are depressed about whether the work is reaching someone. A few black feminists who have worked on the Anthropocene have also been helpful.
I find it almost impossible to talk about cinematic influences because there are so many. I went to see by Mike Nelson coral reef, and it really has nothing to do with the environment, but something about the gargantuan arrangement of things in his setup made me think, “Ah, that’s one way to approach this. ” I don’t have any direct influences, but there are a number of things that are always bubbling, pushing you, if you will.
H: Part of the shape of the piece stems from the fact that it was originally shown in the curve at the Barbican, but what led you to things like the use of six channels or the attribution of which images go where?
JA: I knew we were going to have two sets of documents, one archival and one original. And from the beginning, I thought that we needed two triptychs of these two sets, each obeying the usual democratic logic that I think underlies the triptych work. You talk left and right, trying to create something that ends in the middle, then feeds left and right again, and so on. You are propelled by the dialogue between the screens. The idea was that these two sets, fiction and non-fiction, dialogue. They would have their own universes, and then they would come together and mingle.
There is no set recipe for how to do it right. Sometimes a musical note says something must migrate from the field it feels comfortable in to the next field. Sometimes basic elements like the shapes of certain shots hint that they might have affinities, even though they come from different sources. It is the pictorial profession to make installations. You try things out, throw in moves and see how things take shape. There is a sort of ontology for them; I think these elements have personalities and character. At some point, they themselves suggest the roles they can play in the set.
H: How do they propose?
JA: It’s not so obvious in what’s there; it is much more evident by what is not there. If you see what I left out, you would have a clear idea of how these elements say things. What I left out were the parts that said, “No, we can’t talk to these guys. You’re just going to have to work with them on your own. There is a certain voluntary and altruistic generosity that I need images and sequences to embody, this spirit of conviviality. Without this openness – not just with images, but also with texts, phrases or colors – they just don’t work together. So where they don’t, I take them out and then, in what remains, are the characters ready to participate in this conversation?
There is always a sort of tentative trait in the way images from the past speak to me. I always find it interesting to watch something that says, “I could work today, but if I don’t, don’t worry. It’s about listening carefully to the possibilities the images offer you at any given moment. Do they say they are ready to use now or later? If they say, “I’m an infantryman in the current army,” I say, “Okay, get on board, let’s go. If they say, “No, I have miles to go and promises to keep and all that. See you later,” I said, “Very well. I try to be both a good listener and an observer.
H: What were your archival sources? Were there any that you knew you wanted from the start, or ones that you found useful during your research?
JA: It goes to the heart of how I have worked for the past 30 years. There are things I look for precisely because I know I need them, like images of carbon monoxide poisoning or a factory. Then there are things that I wouldn’t necessarily have in mind before. There are things in Purple which I first saw decades ago. There’s a young singer from an Irish film set in 1964. I looked up something I was doing at the BBC about 30 years ago. It didn’t seem suitable for this project, so I put it aside and forgot about it until Purple. There are things that suggest themselves at the time of my encounters with other things. The young man often seen in black and white in Purple comes from another project. I was talking about the life of DH Lawrence, a very influential writer for me. It says something about the relationship between mother and son, which I thought might belong to that, so I dug it up. You come to a point where you think, “Actually, I’m an archive too.
H: By doing this, and since its inception, has your view of climate change changed?
JA: I’m more optimistic now, actually. I don’t have any logical reason for this, but I think something in the nature of making art induces a kind of optimism. I needed things to make sense to me, and somehow things that make sense seem to offer the possibility of redemption. So I felt better once I did. For example, if it makes sense to me, then everyone can get it too. That was my challenge to myself: how much of the enormity of this can you house in your life, in your head, in your heart? And as soon as it seemed possible for me to do something about it, I felt better. I felt like there were options for all of us.
Purple is on display at the Hirshhorn Museum (Independence Ave SW &, 7th St SW, WashingtonCC) until January 7, 2024. A conversation with Akomfrah takes place at the Hirshhorn on April 20 at 6:30 p.m.
