Collective Hum (New Commissions)

Collective Hum is one of four New Commissions in the ICO’s 2020 national film tour, Second Sight.

A short film exploring the polyphony of collectivity in the desires, motivations and stories that foreground the histories and present(s) of Black British sound. Collective Hum documents a collective in practice through the operation of B.O.S.S using multiple narration, overlapping voices and the sound of group interviews, meetings and events to create a polyphonic score to soundtrack images of the ‘collective bodies, kinaesthetic experience and gestural language’ of sound system culture.

About the Second Sight New Commissions

In association with LUX, the ICO commissioned four new moving image works from artists Ayo Akingbade, B.O.S.S. Collective, Morgan Quaintance and Rehana Zaman. These films are part of the ICO’s 2020 national film tour Second Sight which explores the legacy, methods, aesthetic strategies and histories of the UK Black Film Workshop Movement which developed throughout the 1980s. Films are bookable as a collective programme or individually (please note South is no longer available for bookings).

Read about the tour

About the artist 

Onyeka Igwe (part of B.O.S.S. Collective)
Onyeka Igwe is an artist filmmaker, programmer and researcher. She is born and based in London, UK. In her non-fiction, video work, Onyeka uses dance, voice, archive and text to expose a multiplicity of narratives. The work explores the physical body and geographical place as sites of cultural and political meaning.
onyekaigwe.com

B.O.S.S. collective are: Adae, Deborah Findlater, Evan Ifekoya, Gin Resis’Dance, Jlte, Hakeem Kazeem, Marcus Macdonald, Mellowdramatics, Mwen, Naeem Davis, Natasha Nkonde, Onyeka Igwe, Shenece Oretha, Phoebe Collings-James, Shy One, Sad Queers Club (sqc) and Shamica.

Discussion with Onyeka Igwe

On 15 August 2020, Onyeka Igwe discussed Collective Hum during a roundtable event as part of Club Des Femmes’ online weekender, Between Us We Have Everything We Need. You can view the full discussion here until 30 September 2020.