In ‘Listening All Night To The Rain’, John Akomfrah Explores the Fluidity of Memory, Childhood and Representation

Words: Gina Tonic

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For his 2024 British Pavilion commission at the Venice Biennale, John Akomfrah looked to running water to represent the cultural nuances of different British diasporas. The layered complexity of the footage and audio that makes up the exhibition adds to a legacy of work that Akomfrah has been building upon for over forty years, where he has continually utilised new artistic methods alongside archive finds to hammer home points not only about the disparities and commonalities between all cultures across Britain, but the impact of our environment on our communities. 

The theme of water in Listening All Night To The Rain is poignant in its ability to evoke emotions, memories and the passing of time - an undeniable factor in shaping our culture through reflection on our histories as well as our hopes for the future. Speaking with Akomfrah on the opening of the Venice Biennale, we expressed the need for earnest enjoyment and serenity in the art world.

Gina Tonic: I'd like to start by hearing your interpretation of this year's Biennale title, “Foreigners Everywhere”. I was interested in whether your interpretation of that title has changed throughout the process from getting commissioned for the work, to where we are now. 

John Akomfrah: I had a conversation with a few friends two days ago who were completely against the term and thought it was offensive and racist and I can see what they mean. Because obviously, in English, the term foreigner is such a pejorative that when you hear something like that you think, “Oh, okay, it must be said in irony.” Whereas I'm not sure that ironic detachment exists for the word in other languages.

For us, it's a loaded term. When I heard it, I was like “Wow, that's quite like an impactful choice that they've made.” but the lens of being a British person will definitely change how you see things. I think analysing that lens is interesting for the whole Biennale too. 

I think if you've heard “Foreigners everywhere” anywhere in English or British life, you immediately think, “Okay, this represents a republic position.” Or someone's using it with a kind of Alan Partridge or The Office way. I'm not sure that those comedic cushions are there for it in other languages.

When I first heard it, I was completely in the space of irony with it. I knew what it meant and I was working with that, but different conversations have placed a certain amount of doubt in my head about its efficacy, not necessarily in English, but in other languages. 

But listen – the thing is, we all sometimes get too caught up in concepts of phrases. The fact is that the Biennale was trying to use it as a way of unpacking a whole set of questions about indigeneity, host and guest relation, hospitality, colonial power. 

You've shown at the Venice Biennale before, at the Ghanaian Pavilion - I wondered if it was different. Did you find yourself changing your work methods in the British one versus the Ghanaian one?

There were several major differences actually. For Ghana, I was part of a group. I think that the formulation was three figures of the Ghanaian diaspora and three at home. And I don't have any formal relations with Ghana, because I wasn't brought up there, so my relationship with it is a little bit more tenuous than mine with Britain.

This is a place I learned to walk and speak, and read and write. Where I loved the first time and listened to music and cried, that is where I have a lived relation with. And it's also the place I've been asking the most questions of, for the longest period of time. 

So to be asked to do the British commission, it was immediately a very different experience and also a very different sense of obligation. Like, Ghana doesn't need me - at least that's not what I felt.

I found the ecology of the exhibition just so moving. You mentioned in the show that you saw water as memory. Could you expand on that a little bit, in the context of your work?

I mean, there's definitely several thinkers who have suggested this, and the one that I've been most interested in is the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.

Bachelard has written more suggestively about water than anything. He's chased all the permutations of water. One of his books was called Water and Dreams, and you can't you can't have dreams without some understanding of memory. Because otherwise, how would you remember? 

Gaston Bachelard was connecting water with dreams, connecting it with childhood, innocence and music. Water means a great wealth of great things and I've enjoyed interacting with this work for his show. There's definitely an affinity between water and memory.

What do you hope people leave the exhibition feeling?

Weirdly, a kind of serenity. For me artworks are not a space for pedagogy. You're not trying to teach people anything - I just want them to emerge in a certain emotional state, heightened or otherwise, and the most valuable of the possible qualities that that emotion can embody is just serenity, just to be one with this place.

I think that's so interesting, because people always assume that art is going to be confrontational.

Yes, but it’s the least valuable of the contemporary art functions, because it's so short lived. I think if you want to kind of make an impact, quote, unquote, of lasting duration, to be moved is good because people remember being moved, they remember there's something important and something of importance. To be moved by water is to be transported into a space that you feel is important to us, usually in our childhoods. I don't have a programmatic aspiration for Listening All Night To The Rain.

Listening All Night To The Rain by John Akomfrah, a British Council Commission for the British Pavilion at the Biennale Arte Venice, runs from 20 April to 24 November 2024.