Akomfrah/Bowen/McNeil: History, memory and diasporic cultures
Photograph: BFI
Screening / Lecture
John Akomfrah, The Stuart Hall Project, 2013
Deanna Bowen, sum of the parts: what can be named, 2010
Daniel McNeil (Professor of History, Migration and Diaspora Studies, ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´ University)
On February 11, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University presented a screening of Toronto-based Deanna Bowen’s sum of the parts: what can be named alongside British artist John Akomfrah’s portrait of the late sociologist and theorist Stuart Hall,The Stuart Hall Project. This program examined how the biographic, autobiographic, and documentary forms must navigate the entanglements of memory, lacuna, event and experience.
Bridging these two works, Daniel McNeil discussed how Bowen and Akomfrah invite us to play more carefully with history, memory and cultural politics. In doing so, he framed their politically infused acts of pleasure as critical resources in a living archive of diaspora and dissidence – provocative, suggestive and explorative works that not only provide tools to address how racism and resistance articulate with each other in translocal contexts, but also offer content and a cutting edge to ongoing fights against the violence of nation-states and corporations that have been selling ‘multicultural snake oil’ to the world for years.
A video of McNeil’s presentation is available .