TONIGHT WITH THE OTOLITH GROUP
OTOLITH III (HD, colour, sound, 45 mins, 2009).
Informed by Satyajit Ray's unmade screenplay 'The Alien' (1967) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Appunti per un film sull'India' (1968), Otolith III replays Ray's unrealised science fiction as a series of competing past potential futures, reanimating a cinematic concept marooned in history. According to its scenario, four of Ray’s principal protagonists - the Boy, the Industrialist, the Journalist, and the Engineer- attempt to locate their director, then cast their own characters from a range of figures appearing in disparate source footage, and at long last complete the film.
A Long Time Between Suns (2009)
'A Long Time Between Suns' is an archival assemblage that links the two stages of the exhibition by the same title that was the first solo show in London of The Otolith Group at Gasworks and The Showroom in 2009. 'A Long Time Between Suns' brings together the voiceover scripts of the three films with newly commissioned texts by T.J. Demos, Jean Matthee and Diana McCarty and texts already published by Mark Sinker and the Otolith Group. 'A Long Time Between Suns' has been designed by Will Holder and forms an archival assemblage that crosses a broad stratum of the Group’s practice in its intersection with the practices of interlocutors.
'A Long Time Between Suns' is co-published by Sternberg Press, The Showroom and Gasworks, London, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Amsterdam, MACBA, Barcelona, and Fondazione Galleria Civica - Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità di Trento.
The Otolith Group was formed in 2002 by London-based artists Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar. Their works, which include 'The Otolith Trilogy' (2003-09), 'Inner Time of Television' (2007) and 'Nervus Rerum' (2008), have been exhibited in museums and biennials worldwide, including Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery and Documenta 12. They curated 'The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of The Black Audio Collective' (2007) and edited the accompanying publication and are co-curators of 'Three Early Films: Harun Farocki' at Cubitt Gallery (2009) with Antje Ehmann and Bart van der Heide and Harun Farocki. '22 Films 1968-2009' with Stuart Comer and Antje Ehmann at Tate Modern (2009).
