A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message

Madness Remixed explores the image of exoticism portrayed by Josephine Baker in a 1926 performance entitled The Madness of the Day in which Baker wore the infamous skirt, made of only bananas, that played into stereotypes of Black women as hyper-sexualised. Madness Remixed questions the conditions under which the skirt should be revived, considering that Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, and Diana Ross have all worn the same skirt more recently. 16mm film coated with latex and glitter – a fetishised medium in itself – is data-moshed with Baker in Siren of the Tropics (1927).

Afrofuturism and carnival as resistance at the Junkanoo festival in the Bahamas, from Aesthetica Art Prize winner Rhea Storr.

As we follow The Seeker, who moves between the city and the sanctuary, "MASS" carves out the intimate communal spaces and intangible signals that characterise the contemporary Black experience.

‘The Image that Spits, the Eye that Accumulates’ is a 11 minute digital and Kodachrome Super 16mm film converted to HD by artist filmmaker Rhea Storr. Her work explores the representation of Black and mixed-race cultures drawing on her rural upbringing and British Bahamian heritage. Set in Norfolk’s coastal village of Happisburgh the film navigates how a body, both two and three dimensional, acquires language. The human and photographic bodies must negotiate Norfolk’s eroding landscape. As notions of ‘I’ and ‘other’ disintegrate the images become unstable and unreliable alluding to the effects of coastal erosion on Happisburgh’s coastline and questioning ‘what place does a mixed-race body have in this landscape’. The Kodachrome film – overlaid with grainy family holiday photos and mobile phone footage – was once hailed for its vibrant colours and archival properties however it is now unable to be commercially produced.

A critical reflection on the black diaspora, the architectural history of colonialism and black bodies in a performative walk through London and Nassau along alternative routes.

A love letter to the UK Caribbean diaspora, exploring black histories, physical spaces and notions of community. The site of the Keskidee Centre, a pioneering Afro-Caribbean cultural centre, is now occupied by luxury apartments. The closure of such valued spaces where people could gather and organise coincided with the rise of a political discourse which led to a lack of documentation of Black Caribbean pasts. Working on the surface of the film image itself – making use of a rostrum camera and optical printer – filmmaker Rhea Storr reflects on the histories that remain trapped in the archive and how capitalism has affected our connection to the past.

Junkanoo Talk investigates the language of celebration through carnival. It employs the techniques of costume crafting particular to Junkanoo - a carnival of the Bahamas. The sound is produced on the body and takes the rhythms of Rake 'n' Scrape music, also particular to the Bahamas. James Baldwin is quoted, speaking of the complexities of being an African American living in France, along with the Bahamian Tourism Minister who speaks of appropriation and the body as a voice.