John Akomfrah
The Unfinished Conversation, 2012
Three-channel video installation / Commissioned by Autograph ABP and premiered as part of the 2012 Liverpool Biennial at the Bluecoat.
The Unfinished Conversation is Akomfrah’s newly commissioned work, premiered on the occasion of the 2012 Liverpool Biennial.
It examines the nature of the visual as triggered across the individual’s memory landscape with particular reference to identity and race. The film sees academic Stuart Hall’s memories and personal archives extracted and relocated in an imagined and different time, reflecting the questionable nature of memory itself.
The Unfinished Conversation looks at the theory that identity is not an essence or being but instead a becoming, where individual subjectivities are formed in both real and fictive spaces.
John Akomfrah is a filmmaker, lecturer and writer who lives and works in London, U.K. One of the founding members of the Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah’s previous films include The Nine Muses (2010), Mnemosyne (2010/11) and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993).
