BERN.- The film series When Rain Clouds Gather enters its third round with London-born and based moving image artist Onyeka Igwe. From 15 November 2024 to 1 December 2024, the three-part series No Dance, No Palaver will be shown together with the film The names have changed including my own and truths have been altered in a film installation. The artist and researcher, whose work is on show in the Nigerian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, explores the question of how to live together in a society where individualism thrives. She examines everyday aspects of Black life and uses bodies, archives and oral and written histories to reveal overlooked stories, while focusing on rhythmic editing and the tension between image and sound.

No Dance, No Palaver (2017-2018) is a series of 3 works; Her Name in My Mouth (2017), Sitting on a Man (2018) and Specialised Technique (2018), which cover research into the Aba Women’s War of 1929. All of the films use the first major anti-colonial uprising in Nigeria as an entry point to experiment with colonial moving images relating to West Africa during the first half of the 20th century. No Dance, No Palaver  serves as an attempt to use critical proximity, being close to, with or amongst, the visual trauma of the colonial archive to transform the way in which we know the people it contains.

The names have changed including my own and truths have been altered (2019)
This is a story of the artist’s grandfather, the story of the ‘land’ and the story of an encounter with Nigeria — retold at a single point in time, in a single place. The artist is trying to tell the truth in as many ways as possible. So the names have changed to tell us the same story in four different ways: a folktale of two brothers rendered in the broad, unmodulated strokes of colonial British moving images; a Nollywood TV series, on VHS, based on the first published Igbo novel; oral histories of the family patriarch, passed down through generations; and the diary entries from the artist’s first solo visit to her family’s hometown.

The film screening program When Rain Clouds Gather discusses artistic imaginaries for possible futures, contemplating social and environmental justice. The series presents an overview of artistic practices that address the different imaginaries and responses that shape how we envision a climatic and more just future. Inspired by the homonymous novel of Bessie Head, the novel is a tale of hope amidst despair, inspiring us to think of possible futures with care and determination, against the damning reality of climate catastrophe.