Artist and filmmaker, John Akomfrah presents his first solo exhibition in China at Lisson Gallery Beijing, with the artist’s three-channel film installation, The Airport (2016), a three-screen film installation conceived as a meditation on the history of Greece, the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath. The exhibition follows the premiere of two major new commissions for Sharjah Biennial in February 2023, and the announcement that Akomfrah will represent Great Britain at the 2024 Venice Biennale – following his participation in the inaugural, critically acclaimed Ghana Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Earlier this year, Akomfrah was awarded a knighthood in the King’s New Year UK Honours List, after receiving a CBE in 2017.
Read moreThe Airport (2016) is an elliptical, immersive, 53-minute film installation that follows a spaceman who lands in Southern Greece and adopts an abandoned airfield near Athens as his base. The film is populated by displaced and enigmatic characters, including an elderly man in a tuxedo suit who re-lives moments from his past and his future, a wandering astronaut, a marauding gorilla, and forlorn travelers. Taking its cue from the Greek director Theo Angelopoulos and his long sweeping shots, Akomfrah uses tracking shots of the landscape of Athens and Southern Greece. Through these dreamscapes the film contemplates the significance of empires and the ghosts which linger in our collective consciousness, both physically through architecture and the psychological traces from previous generations.
Accompanied by a mesmerizing soundtrack, the film’s narrative weaves together cinematic, literary, philosophical, and artistic traditions, where spaces of human ruin and natural beauty abound. In particular, Akomfrah recalls the work of two filmmaking greats: Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) and Theo Angelopoulos (1935–2012). The film’s elastic sense of time references Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), while Angelopoulos’s technique of constant movement between camera, characters, and locations is also employed to a poetic effect.
The Airport followed other hugely influential films by Akomfrah, who came to prominence in the 1980s as a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective. For the past 40 years, Akomfrah has used film to challenge conventional histories and confront topics from post-colonialism, Black identity and the diasporic experience, to migration and our destruction of the planet. Known for his use of montage and bricolage techniques, Akomfrah’s films are characterised by a multi-layered approach that fuses archival film footage, newsreel and still photography with newly shot materials. Blending imagery across time and place, Akomfrah embraces the philosophy of dialectics and constructs complex cinematic experiences that invite us to reflect on historical narratives with a critical lens.
艺术家兼电影人约翰·亚康法 (John Akomfrah) 的中国首次个展将在里森画廊北京空间呈现，展出一件三频影像装置《机场》(The Airport，2016)。该作品围绕希腊历史、2007至2008年的金融危机及其创伤展开沉思。亚康法的作品近年频繁受邀参与重要国际双年展：继2019年参加好评如潮的威尼斯双年展加纳馆开馆展，亚康法将代表英国参加2024年的威尼斯双年展；今年2月，亚康法的两部全新委托创作影像也在沙迦双年展上首映。2023年初，亚康法在英国国王新年授勋名单中被授予骑士爵位；此前他曾在2017年获得大英帝国司令勋章。
时长53分钟的《机场》是一件深奥莫测的沉浸式影像装置，其叙事跟随一位宇航员的脚步展开，他降落在希腊南部，并把基地建立在雅典附近的一座废弃机场。影像中有许多无家可归的神秘人物，比如一位身穿晚礼服、重温自己的过去与未来的老人，以及一只猎食的猩猩和几个孤独的旅人。艺术家借鉴希腊导演西奥·安哲罗普洛斯 (Theo Angelopoulos) 的移动长镜头，对雅典及希腊南部的景观进行了跟拍。通过如梦似幻的场景，作品探讨着帝王统治产生的深远影响，深掘萦绕着人们集体意识的记忆——这些徘徊不散的往事既体现于实体的建筑遗迹中，也存在于几代人的心灵轨迹中。
伴随悠扬的背景音乐，交织着电影、文学、哲学和艺术的叙事勾勒出人类废墟与自然风景并存的画面。亚康法在这件作品中还呼应了两位电影大师的创作——影片松散灵活的时间线参考了斯坦利·库布里克 (Stanley Kubrick) 1968年的电影《2001太空漫游》(2001: A Space Odyssey)；对西奥·安哲罗普洛斯 (Theo Angelopoulos) 的借鉴则体现在镜头、角色与场景的持续移动，及其呈现出的诗意。
《机场》是亚康法众多极具影响力的作品之一。他在1980年代以“黑人音频电影团体” (Black Audio Film Collective) 创始成员的身份崭露头角。在过去的40年里，亚康法一直用影像来挑战传统历史观，直面后殖民主义、非裔种族身份认同、离散经验、人口迁移以及环境破坏等议题。他以蒙太奇与拼贴技术闻名，作品以融合影像资料、新闻片段、摄影静帧与全新拍摄的素材为特色。通过哲学辩证法，以及采用来自不同时间和空间的图像，亚康法构建出复杂巧妙的观影体验，邀请我们以批判性的视角审视历史叙事。
