THE OTOLITH GROUP,
2023

Founded in 2002 by the artists and theorists Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, the Otolith Group engages with the cultural and political legacies and potentialities of non-aligned movements, new media, Black Study, Afrofuturism, and Indofuturism while thinking speculatively with science fictions of the present. Their methodologies incorporate post-lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions, and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human, and the anti-human. It has played a crucial intergenerational role in Black and Asian diasporic film and media art in the UK, and has been closely tied to CCRU/Warwick philosophy since its inception.

In their 2019 film, INFINITY minus infinity, the celebrated multi-disciplinary artist collective contests the toxic sociopolitical histories that inform Black life in contemporary England. The film interrogates the “hostile environment policy” enacted by Theresa May’s Conservative government in 2012, which was framed as an effort to combat “illegal immigration” in the UK. But the policy, which harshly denied access to services and employment for undocumented migrants, reflected a broader, suffocating atmosphere of anti-blackness in Britain—one tied to centuries-long histories of discrimination, extraction, and environmental devastation. Collaborating with a range of poets, performers, and scholars, core group members Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun craft what Artforum critic Ed Halter described as “a constantly moving flux of bodies, histories, and theories.” An expressive and incisive visual essay, INFINITY minus infinity combines deftly-layered strata of imagery and sound to survey the pasts and presents of racial capitalism and the Anthropocene—while gesturing toward alternative futures informed by Black radical feminist traditions. 

Following the screening, Otolith Group members Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun will appear to discuss the film with Antawan Byrd (College Fellow, Department of Art History, Northwestern University).

This screening and conversation is hosted by Block Cinema at the Block Museum of Art.