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Resistance Transnationalism and Anti-Racism: Documenta 11’s Political and Aesthetic Repurposing of Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs

Keith B. Wagner 1

1홍익대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Art traverses borders and nowhere is this more apparent than on the mega exhibition from Germany known as Documenta. By repurposing the Black Audio Film Collective’s essay film Handsworth Songs (dir. John Akomfrah, 1986) to installation art in the 2002 Documenta 11 series, I argue that notions of transnationalism uproots meaning and discourse about racial discrimination for future retrospection in our racialized global society, sparking a cross-continental dialogue in the process. A second concern in this essay is the “trans-media” modulations of BAFC’s essay film format ― an elastic mode of filmmaking and storytelling ― particularly in its “rethinking” of politico-aesthetic content. My ultimate contention is that the transformation of the essay film to that of installation art in Documenta 11 is still irrevocably indexical, precisely because it occupies a new but stable role: “transmitter” of mixed culture and mixed history in gallery rather than theatrical (or television) exhibition.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.