“I needed to return to a time earlier than the weapons got here out—to discover what different weapons, supposed or in any other case, had been in play.”
—John Akomfrah

With stunning visuals of landscapes from throughout the globe, beautiful underwater footage and a haunting soundtrack, the movie displays on “The Columbian Trade”—the widespread switch of vegetation, animals, treasured metals, commodities, populations, know-how, ailments and concepts between the Americas, Afro-Eurasia and Europe—the “New World” and the “Outdated World”—from the 1400s onwards.

For Akomfrah, who’s well-known for his immersive and thought-provoking installations that look at points comparable to colonialism and local weather change, it’s been a very long time within the making.

John Akomfrah, artist and filmmaker says:

“My work on Arcadia started in 2019 after receiving the fee from The Field, and my preliminary reference level was the crusing of the Mayflower from Plymouth to America in 1620. By early 2020, many of the analysis was accomplished, however per week after we’d finalised the filming areas the UK went right into a lockdown.”

“The three years that adopted gave me the time and area for a rethink and the importance of the pandemic grew to become clear. It was a well timed reminder that there are all the time highly effective forces at work which might be past our management. People are by no means the one actors on the stage. I made a decision I had to return even additional, and I grew to become concerned about how the settling of the ‘New World’ wasn’t accomplished solely by way of swords or battles, however included a cocktail of viruses and germs that folks had no immunity for.”

Arcadia has a multi-layered, non-linear narrative that includes storms, stressed seas, huge skies, seashores, ice fields, mountains, rivers and forests. We see how miraculous our planet is, however the epic surroundings and landscapes are “interrupted” by photos of cargo, symbols of commerce, ageing boat hulks, microbes, cells and folks affected by smallpox. They mix to evoke concepts of migration, journeys, colonial encounters, how issues journey and unfold, progress and decay.

“There’s a slight ironic detachment with the title,” explains Akomfrah. “Someplace within the European creativeness there’s this fantasy of a brand new starting—a spot ‘over there’ the place we will be ourselves, the place we will be free. But, within the strategy of attempting to create a ‘inexperienced and nice land’ individuals have usually ended up creating one thing fairly totally different. Migration is such a fancy concern with many, many unintended penalties. Any individual’s free world is normally another person’s hell.”

Arcadia, an preliminary model of which was screened at “Sharjah Biennial 15: Pondering Traditionally within the Current” earlier this yr, has been re-edited particularly for its presentation in Plymouth. With a operating time of fifty minutes, it kinds a part of a season of exhibitions and occasions at The Field primarily based across the theme of “Revisiting Historical past.”

Victoria Pomery, CEO at The Field says:

“The Field is delighted to be presenting Arcadia from this autumn. It’s such a strong work—a poignant reminder of the relationships between the previous and the current, and the way the buildings of our up to date age have been knowledgeable by sure narratives, however not others. This fee is a part of a wider physique of labor we’re presenting over the following few months which displays on understanding extra about Britain’s colonial previous and Plymouth’s place inside it, in addition to the variety and richness of historical past and our personal distinctive collections.”

Akomfrah, who will symbolize Nice Britain at subsequent yr’s “Venice Biennale” (20 April–24 November 2024) presents Arcadia as 5 screens within the form of a cross—a departure from his current three-screen works and a nod to the expansive nature of its subject material. A part of the movie encompasses a piece of music referred to as The African—a nineteenth century opera in regards to the conquest of colony. The sound of ticking clocks will be heard at varied factors to sign the approaching of the Fashionable Age.

That is the second time Akomfrah has labored with Plymouth after 2015’s Tropikos, a fictional costume drama set within the 1500s, which was filmed alongside the River Tamar and focuses on town’s place on the centre of British maritime historical past and its hyperlinks to the slave commerce.

“It simply felt essential to restage this in Plymouth,” says Akomfrah. “It was as soon as the epicentre of colonial journey—the New York of the sixteenth century. You possibly can’t do a narrative in regards to the ‘New World’ with out together with Plymouth.”

at The Field, Plymouth
till June 2, 2024