The Otolith Group is an award wining United Kingdom based artist collective and organization founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. The Otolith Group explores the critical potential of images in contemporary society, with a particular interest in utopian histories, speculative fiction, and the politics of post-colonialism.

In conversation with not all realisms, the Smart Museum of Art screens the 2018 cinematic collage Nucleus of the Great Union. The film reimagines the digital afterlives of novelist Richard Wright’s photographs as he traveled throughout the Gold Coast (present day Ghana) where he witnessed Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, West Africa’s first mass socialist party, as it campaigned for independence from British rule.

After the film screening, Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, not all realisms curator Leslie M. Wilson, and UChicago faculty Adom Getachew and Natacha Nsabimana will be in conversation about the significance of the photograph in post-colonial West Africa and the ways in which Nucleus of the Great Union as a film invites us to consider Wright’s practice anew.

FREE, but space is limited. Please register in advance.

Doors open with refreshments at 7 pm. The film screening and conversation will begin promptly at 7:30 pm.

Additional screenings of the film will take place on Saturday, May 6, 2023 from 1–2:30 pm in Logan 201. Registration is not required.

About the film
Nucleus of the Great Union
The Otolith Group
2018
Duration: 32 mins, 35 seconds
Color
Sound: Stereo
Ratio: 16:9
HD Video

This program is co-presented by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, Logan Center for the Arts, and the Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts, in collaboration with Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art and Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group.

As part of their week-long Chicago visit, The Otolith Group will appear for a public screening of their film INFINITY minus infinity at the Block Museum of Art at 7 pm on Friday, May 5, 2023. Learn more and RSVP »