Courtesy John Akomfrah
Mnemosyne January 13 – February 21 2010, The Black Room, The Public, West Bromwich
Seminal film-maker John Akomfrah was given rare access to the BBC archives to create his latest work, Mnemosyne, which will go on display at The Public in West Bromwich in January.
Akomfrah spliced footage from 1960 to 1981 with contemporary scenes of Birmingham, adding new extracts that he filmed of a remote, snowy landscape. The resulting work explores the changing experience of black and migrant labour in the West Midlands.
Courtesy John Akomfrah
“Going through the archives was an amazing voyage of memory and discovery,” said the film-maker, who was allowed use of the library as part of a BBC and Arts Council initiative called Made In England – a project exploring how England makes art, and art makes England.
Talking about the resulting work, he explained: “I am using the expression ‘tone poem’ to suggest the lateral journeys within Mnemosyne that play on the main theme of fragility, the burden and the excess of remembering.” He said that the title of the work refers to the nine muses, the personification of memory in Greek Mythology.
Akomfrah co-founded the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective in 1982 to address issues of Black British identity. In 1986, he directed the controversial and influential Handsworth Songs, a historical documentary that looked at experiences of being black in Britain.
