A room of darkness. Flashing lights. Pounding drums. Visitors to Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom’s latest installation at Sheffield’s Site Gallery were encouraged to experience this abstract representation of learning, resistance and creation on their own terms.
‘Before, During & After: Here Now (How To Keep The Balance)’ was described by Site Gallery as an “ongoing project of learning to play the drums”, an exhibition that included video, sound and photography.
The room was full of multiple screens, both overhead and rear projectors, CRT TVs, multiple seating options and just two speakers to fill the room with sound. The walls were adorned with soundproof panels and heavy cloth curtains, all in dark greys. The only light came from small LED strips running along either side of the room and from each screen as they played. There were benches, stools and cushions folded up in the centre of the room, with a lot of floor space that allowed you to wander.
The sound was loud but not overwhelmingly so. No matter how you positioned yourself the drums were playing behind you, and every now and then you heard talking; snippets of everyday conversations and private moments. With the minimal lighting and darkness of the room you felt hidden but not unwelcome.
“I’d used percussion and particularly drums previously" Jnr said. "I was thinking about how it’s a diasporic instrument. I like the idea that this drumkit is a makeup of separate instruments and I live in this diaspora world.”
At four hours and eighteen minutes long, Jnr’s film was an impressive masterclass in precision planning. Throughout the room, multiple screens worked in unison to display moments of the film in carefully choreographed narration. Filming, editing and installation of this absorbing exhibit would have allowed for little error, an amusing irony for a work that celebrates the mistakes we all make when learning.
“The viewers are never experiencing the same thing. (I’m) breaking up the idea that you have to be committed to seeing a video. You can come in for five minutes or two hours, I leave it open for different types of viewers to become a participant in the process.”
The room used soundboards to capture as much of the music as possible, a running motif in his work, and no daylight intruded on the space. Time slipped away in this room whilst you indulged, and you may leave and return as many times as you wished.
On my first visit to the installation I sat in the center of the room with only two other visitors present; a mum and young child. The music was loud and encompassed me without bombarding my senses. The constant low hum of the bass drum against the crash cymbal became hypnotic when paired with the lighting from the screens flashing in succession. I sat for half an hour fascinated by the rush of colour and sound, and partly amused by the toddler climbing over the cushions on the floor around me.
For my second visit I sat in prolonged darkness while thirty other visitors filled the room. They were sitting on the soft carpeted floor; on folded-out cushions; and on hard wooden benches. One visitor had disappeared behind the rear projection screen and did not reemerge during the twenty minutes I sat there. The audio was mostly quiet; in-between moments played where the artist took a break. It felt like a more familiar gallery visit, where the viewers sat in quiet appreciation.
Upon my third visit I strolled around the exhibit alone in darkness, the mounted flat screen occasionally showing the blurred footage of the snare drum, and the overhead projector on the back wall displaying the defocused image of the artist’s leg. This visit was mostly auditory, compelling me to move. Between the beats were fragments of conversation between himself and a visitor.
“Are you allergic to nuts?”
“I am deathly allergic to dairy.”
“Do you like cashews?”
“I love cashews!”
This aspect of everyday life makes his work so distinctive. The installation was part of Jnr’s ongoing project around performance and its relationship to, and absence of, the body. Previous iterations of this work have incorporated other performers, either live or recorded, but always separated or unseen, in order to have the viewer and performer on a mutual plane.
Here Jnr worked alongside videographers and photographers from different specialties such as fashion to “express the limits of my knowledge and influence how I decide to capture this. I told one of them not to capture me so he recorded it out of focus, it was a whole different way of seeing it. That’s how culture production is usually made and it’s an area of culture production that’s often overlooked. The ideas of ideas being linked and this genius, this sole practitioner, shift how you see things. You’re in dialogue with them. This anthropological idea of knowledge.”
His criteria of working with other creatives to adapt his vision shows “the limits of something” and beautifully demonstrates his drive to shed light on the resistance he embodies in his work. “One form is working against that gallery system's emphasis on newness.” By inviting fresh ideas into an ongoing exploration he brings activism into the gallery space. “How do you avoid things becoming a moment? The fact that the exhibitions change around. You’re always supposed to be streamlining yourself. With that certain things have to be forgotten, how do you acknowledge those truths? Those realities?”
A powerful message for creatives and visitors alike. I eagerly await the next iteration.
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This exhibition ran 28th September 2023 to 18th February 2024, and concluded in its final week with an in depth talk led by Rosie Cooper with the artist at Site Gallery, Sheffield. Quotes from the artist have been taken directly from that artist talk. Photos taken by myself.
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