Panel discussion: John Akomfrah

Join us for an evening of discussion to mark the end of the BP Spotlight display of John Akomfrah’s The Unfinished Conversation.

A distinguished panel – Chaired by Mark Fisher (author of Capitalist Realism), and including John Akomfrah, artist and writer Kodwo Eshun (The Otolith Group), and campaigning journalist and broadcaster Beatrix Campbell – explore The Unfinished Conversation’s investigation of cultural, ethnic and personal identity through the memories of the late cultural theorist; Professor Stuart Hall.

Following the conclusion of the event a drinks reception is held in the Clore Auditorium Foyer at 20.00.

John Akomfrah (born 1957, Accra, Ghana) is well known for his work with the London-based media workshop Black Audio Film Collective which he co-founded in 1982. He made is debut with Handsworth Songs went on to win the Grierson Award for Best Documentary in 1987. Selected exhibitions and screenings include Liverpool Biennial (2012) and MoMA, New York (2011) and international film festivals such as Sundance, Utah (2013) and Toronto (2012).

Beatrix Campbell is a campaigning journalist, writer and Green Party candidate. She was a founder of Red Rag magazine and has specialised in feminist analyses of class, work, sex and violence. She is co-author, with Anna Coote, of the first history of the women's liberation movement in Britain, Sweet Freedom: The Struggle for Women's Liberation (London: Picador, 1982). She is also author of Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the Eighties (London: Virago, 1984) and Agreement! The State, Conflict and Change in Northern Ireland (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2008). Her new book End of Equality (Manifestos for the 21st Century) is coming soon.

Kodwo Eshun is an artist and theorist. In 2002, he co-founded The Otolith Group with Anjalika Sagar, a critically acclaimed artist collaboration who bases its practice in moving image installation and film making. In 2010 The Group were nominated for the Turner Prize. The Otolith Collective is also run by the artists and integrates artists’ writing, workshops, exhibition curation, publication and develops public platforms for the close readings of the moving image in contemporary society. In 2007 The Otolith Group curated and produced The Ghosts of Songs, the first Retrospective dedicated to the work of John Akomfrah and his collaborators who formed the Black Audio Film Collective which was active between 1982–1998. Kodwo Eshun currently lectures on the MA programme in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism (London: Zer0 books, 2009) and the forthcoming Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. His writing has appeared in many publications, including The Wire, Frieze, The Guardian and Film Quarterly. He is Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East London. He has also produced two acclaimed audio-essays in collaboration with Justin Barton: londonunderlondon (2005) and On Vanishing Land (2013).