Use of professional footage from newsreels, 50 years worth of footage from BBC Natural History Unit, ambient music, ocean sounds, art-historical references (Raft of the Medusa, The Deluge).
Multiple screens and sources encourages the viewer to make connections, comparisons through his cinematic montage technique to form an understanding of the work and its concerns.
Akomfrah’s sea is the setting and central character, both supporting life and consuming it. Linking it to my current project it can also be seen as a natural historical archive – shipwrecks, drownings, carcasses, migrations, transport routes – recalling periods of world history (slavery, exploration, tragedy, pre-history) and at the same time erasing/concealing.
The montage as a technique evokes nostalgia in the viewer.
What to take from Akomfrah: Multiplicity, archival, multi-media (sound, video, 2D), erasure, montage (nostalgia)
calummartin 