Seeing with opacity: mediation and non-human history in John Akomfrah’s audio-visual practice

This seminar focuses on the audio-visual installations of the contemporary artist John Akomfrah, with speaker Ghada Habib (Visiting Research Fellow.

It interprets his use of filmic technique, form and aesthetic strategy to produce opacity in the historical representations of non-/human animals and their shared habitats.

In Akomfrah’s works expressions of opacity figure a representational approach that is opposed to those motivated by immediacy, transparency and exposure. Opacity accentuates mediation, and it does this not by simply revealing the presence of mediation, but by involving us in its operation. Such an articulation of opacity has particular theoretical significance in the technologically mediated encounters Akomfrah stages between human and non-human forms of life and their shared habitats.

Twinning opacity with Akomfrah’s sustained interest in non-/human encounters leads to the recognition that Akomfrah presents a de-limited concept of history in which the human is a decentred part. While the supra-huma capacity of his technological medium is key to this decentring, expressions of opacity also indicate a critical engagement with its representational capacity and the forms of knowing and being that it enables.

Attending to expressions of opacity this paper asks, what possibilities does articulating opacity using lens-based technology provide for, at once, displacing anthropocentrism and accentuating mediation? Can opacity move us beyond simply revealing the historical conditions of mediation to recognising of our involvement in its operation? How does this shift produce transformative political effects?

John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015. Three channel HD colour video installation, 7.1 sound. 48 minutes 30 seconds. © John Akomfrah; Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery.

About the speaker

Ghada Habib is Visiting Research Fellow based in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

Her recently completed PhD focussed on the contemporary artist John Akomfrah and elaborated the theoretical implications of his audio-visual essays by interpreting the intersections of his use of archives, form, aesthetic strategy and medium specificity and his critical treatment of colonial afterlives.

Ghada’s research interests include artists’ moving image, critical theory and post-colonial perspectives.

Book your place

This seminar is organised by the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds.

It is free to attend and all are welcome.

Feature image

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Photo: Fiona Blair.