INFINITY minus Infinity

The phrase “hostile environment” invokes the covert policy of targeting migrants enacted by the UK Conservative government since 2014. It stands for the criminalization of the Afro-Caribbeans that migrated to Britain in the 1950s to help with the reconstruction after the war. The recent effort to detain and deport the women and men of the “Windrush generation” – so called because they followed in the wake of the men that emigrated to Britain from the Caribbean on board the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948 – reveals the commitment of the British state to disarticulating the forms of attachment and belonging of Afro-Caribbean settlement that helped decolonize the British Empire from within.
INFINITY minus Infinity brings together dance, performance, music, recital, and digital animation to compose a transhistorical zone in which the unpayable debts of racial capitalism cannot be separated from the ongoing crimes of the climate catastrophe. It enacts past distress, present duress, and future dread through the assembly of a chorus of trans-temporal deities whose utterances, expressions, gestures, and movements personify the compounded, accumulated, irreparable times and spaces of the hostile environment.
by The Otolith Group
with Dante Micheaux, Elaine Michener, Esi Eshun, Ana Pi, Kathryn Yusoff, Vivian Lawino-OLajde, Angela Chan
United Kingdom / United Arab Emirates / Belgium 2016 English 52’ Colour

With

  • Dante Micheaux
  • Elaine Michener
  • Esi Eshun
  • Ana Pi
  • Kathryn Yusoff
  • Vivian Lawino-OLajde
  • Angela Chan

Crew

Director The Otolith Group
Cinematography Kate McDonough
Montage Mariko Montpetit
Music Tyler Friedman
Sound Design Tyler Friedman
Sound Mark Andrews
Make-Up Emmal Baker
Casting The Otolith Group
Production Manager Hannah Liley
Producer The Otolith Group
Co-Producer Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture
Commissioned by Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019

Produced by

The Otolith Group

The Otolith Group

The Otolith Group is an artist-led collective and organization founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002 in London that integrates film and video making, artists’ writing, workshops, exhibition curation, publication, and developing public platforms for the close reading of the image in contemporary society. The group’s work is formally engaged with research-led projects exploring the legacies and potentialities of artist-led proposals around the document and the essay film, the archive, the aural and sonic medium, speculative futures, and science-fictions.

Filmography

2003 Otolith Timeline; 29 min. · Otolith Timeline · Otolith I; 23 min. · Otolith I 2006 Be Silent for the Ears of God are Everywhere · Be Silent for the Ears of God are Everywhere; 11 min. 2007 Otolith II; video installation, 48 min. · Otolith II · Inner Time of Television; video installation · Inner Time of Television; video installation 2008 Nervus Rerum; video installation, 32 min. · Nervus Rerum 2009 Otolith III; 49 min. · Otolith III 2010 Communists Like Us; 22 min. · Communists Like Us · Hydra Decapita; video installation, 31 min. · Hydra Decapita 2011 Anathema; video installation, 37 min. · Anathema 2012 I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another · I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another; video installation, 33 min. · The Radiant · The Radiant; 65 min., Forum Expanded 2012 · People to be Resembling; video installation, 21 min. · People to be Resembling 2013 Medium Earth; 41 min. · Medium Earth · In the Year of the Quiet Sun · In the Year of the Quiet Sun; videoinstallation, 33 min. 2014 Sovereign Sisters · Sovereign Sisters; 4 min. 2015 From Left to Night · From Left to Night; video installation 2017 The Third Part of the Third Measure; video installation, 43 min., Forum Expanded 2018 · The Third Part of the Third Measure 2018 Nucleus of the Great Union; video installation, 32 min. · O Horizon; video installation, 90 min. 2019 INFINITY minus Infinity; video installation, 52 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2020