Artists' Film: 4 Waters - Deep Implicancy

Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy, 2019. Film still. Courtesy the artists
Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy, 2019. Film still. Courtesy the artists
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4 Waters-Deep Implicancy (2019), HD Video, colour, sound, 31’

Join us for the screening of 4 Waters-Deep Implicancy, a retelling of the Haitian Revolution by Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva from the perspective of an earthquake in 1784. This earthquake marked an indigenous foretelling of Black Independence. At a cosmic level, it brought knowledge from the first metric of time. Crossing four waters – the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, they follow the displacement of peoples alongside the movement of clouds, ideas, earth, and migration of matter, at a quantum level, from one state to another. The film considers urgent global issues including migration, displacement, legacies of colonialism and ecological devastation, presenting a reimagined pre-life cosmos of gathered and imagined knowledges, a time that Ferreira da Silva describes as ‘Deep Implicancy’.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with the artists.

This event is part of the series The Violence of Abstraction that brings together artistic practices dealing with colonial legacies and its interrelated ecological-climatic dynamics.

Denise Ferreira da Silva is a Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race and co-editor of Race, Empire, and The Crisis of the Subprime (with Paula Chakravartty). Her art-related work includes texts for publications linked to the 2016 Liverpool and and Sao Paulo Biennales, Venice 2017, and Documenta 14, as well as collaborations, such as the play Return of the Vanishing Peasant, with Ros Martin, the films Serpent Rain (2016) and 4Waters-Deep Implicancy (2018), with Arjuna Neuman; and events (performances, talks, and private sessions) and texts related Poethical Readings and the Sensing Salon, with Valentina Desideri.

Arjuna Neuman is an artist, filmmaker and writer born on an airplane. Recent exhibitions and screenings of his work include Showroom Gallery, London; TPW Gallery, Toronto; Forum Expanded, Berlin Berlinale; Berlin Biennial 10, Germany; Serpentine and Qalandia Biennial; Gasworks, London; Bold Tendencies, London, UK; Or Gallery, Vancouver; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; MAAT and Docslisboa, Portugal; Sharjah Biennial 13; Bergen Assembly; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the 56th Venice Biennale and SuperCommunity; Industry of Light, London; Haus Der Kulturen der Welt; Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon; Canadian Centre for Architecture; amongst others. As a writer Neuman has published essays in Relief Press, Into the Pines Press, The Journal for New Writing, VIA Magazine, Concord, Art Voices, Flaunt, LEAP, Hearings and e-flux.

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