Past Events

Screening of John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses (2010)

Lecture

  • 26 to 27 November 2020
  • This film screening is part of the multi-part conference programme British Art and Natural Forces
  • Online film screening

We are providing free access to watch John Akomfrah's 40-minute film The Nine Muses online for a 48-hour period on 26 and 27 November in advance of Tiffany Boyle and Jessica Carden's paper ‘Affective Proximities', which is being given as a live webinar on 27 November 12.00–13.00.

Structured as an allegorical fable, The Nine Muses is a stylized and idiosyncratic telling of the history of mass migration from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia to rebuild post-war Britain. This film is a monument to a forgotten generation. Weaving Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, stunning winter vistas and a vast array of archival material The Nine Muses is divided into nine overlapping musical chapters to create a philosophical rumination on the emigrants experience, the journey and the idea of home. Devised and scripted from the writings of an array of authors including Dante Alighieri, Samuel Beckett, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, John Milton, Friedrich Nietzsche, William Shakespeare, Sophocles and Dylan Thomas, The Nine Muses is a cerebral and sensual journey – a mediation on displacement, identity and memory.

How to watch

Please sign-up via Eventbrite and you will be sent a password to access the film nearer the time. Limited availability. Ticket sales end 25 November at 3pm. An email will be sent out after this time.

The Nine Muses (film still)

John Akomfrah, The Nine Muses (film still), 2010. Single Channel HD video, 40 minutes. (AKOM100002)

Digital image courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery. © Smoking Dogs Films