Five Murmurations (excerpt)

Five Murmurations is London-based, Ghanaian-born artist John Akomfrah’s response to the global pandemic, murder of George Floyd, and worldwide protests in support of Black Lives Matter. It is a visual essay of our current times.
Moving across three screens, the artwork opens with details from Hieronymus Bosch’s oil painting The Conjurer (1502), in which the Dutch artist depicts how easily people are conned. Akomfrah then weaves together an extensive archive of images that mix iconic works of art with scenes shot and gathered in the globally fraught 18-month period between 2019 and 2021. The filmmaker combines what he calls “current emotional states”-sitting alone with one’s phone or staring out the window-with “states of emotions”-collective responses of protest or fear.
The result is five chapters, or “murmurations,” a term that describes the tight formation assumed by birds in flight to protect themselves from predators. Five Murmurations is accompanied by a soundscape that integrates haunting music with the calls of protestors, police recordings, and the final words of George Floyd.
John Akomfrah
b. 1957 Accra, Ghana
Works in London, UK
Five Murmurations
2021
Three channel HD black-and-white video installation, 7:1 sound
54 min. 39 sec.
Courtesy Smoking Dog Films and Lisson Gallery