Friday, December 30, 2016

Ayesha Hameed: Black Atlantis/A Rough History

Monday 2 January, 2017, from 7 pm, at Alice Yard


 Still from A Rough History

Artist and writer Ayesha Hameed has been in residence at Alice Yard in late December. On January 2, 2017, she will present a series of works in sound and film. Hameed’s work explores contemporary borders and migration, the philosopher Walter Benjamin, and visual cultures of the Black Atlantic. She will be showing parts of two ongoing projects. Some of this will be a response to the space of Alice Yard and her first trip to Trinidad.

Black Atlantis is an audio-visual essay that looks at possible afterlives of the Black Atlantic: in illegal migration at sea today, in oceanic environments, through Afrofuturistic dancefloors and soundsystems, and in outer space. Black Atlantis combines two discourses: Afrofuturism and the anthropocene. While in Trinidad, Hameed has been researching a new chapter of Black Atlantis exploring the relationship between plantation economies and the anthropocene.

A Rough History (of the Destruction of Fingerprints) is a 16-mm film that considers a practice by migrants entering the EU of destroying their fingerprints to avoid detection by in the Eurodac system, alongside other histories of fingerprinting and fingerprint erasures. It looks at the coalescence of skin and data in the collection and destruction of fingerprints, at the life and circulation of the image of the fingerprint, and the different lives of the bodies that produce such images.

All are invited.


Still from A Rough History

About the artist: Ayesha Hameed’s recent presentations and performance lectures include Black Atlantis at ICA London (2015), Labour in a Single Shot at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2015), at The Chimurenga Library at the Showroom, London (2015), Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, Oxford (2015), Edinburgh College of Art (2015), Goldsmiths MFA Lectures (2016), and Empire Remains (2016). A Rough History (of the destruction of fingerprints) has been screened or presented at Forensic Architecture at the House of World Cultures (Berlin) in 2014, at Social Glitch at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich Vienna (2015), at Pavillion, Leeds in 2015, at Qalandiya International Palestine Biennial (2016), at Ashakal Alwan/Homeworks Space Programme, Beirut (2016) and the Bartlett School of Architecture (2016). She is currently the Joint Programme Leader in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.

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