The Third Part of the Third Measure

Overview

Founded by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, The Otolith Group creates films, installations, audioworks and performances informed by methods drawn from the cognitive estrangement generated by science fiction. Their film and video works incorporate post lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human and the anti-human.

The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017), a new audiovisual composition commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and SB13, creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of avant-garde composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman. The Third Part of the Third Measure focuses on what The Otolith Group describe as ‘an experience of watching in the key of listening’, invoking political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement building that participates in the global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism. The Third Part of the Third Measure invites viewers to attend to exemplary ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism that Eastman himself once described as ‘full of honour, integrity and boundless courage’.

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 13.