Film Screening: The Last Angel of History
Fri Oct 2, 2026 | 5–6:30 PM
The Vancouver Art Gallery is pleased to co-present with the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) a special thirtieth anniversary screening of speculative documentary The Last Angel of History by visionary filmmaker, artist and Black Audio Film Collective co-founder John Akomfrah.
Tracing the musical legacy of Afrofuturism from its rhythmic origins during the Transatlantic Slave Trade through the imaginary future worlds conjured in techno and jungle music, Akomfrah’s stunning film examines the intersection between Pan-African culture, science fact and science fiction.
The screening will be preceded by a live performance from Speaker Music, the music alias of DeForrest Brown Jr., whose improvisational performances and recorded works sculpt memory and sonic form into a multi-textural rhythmic body.
DeForrest Brown Jr. will then return to conclude the event with a moderated conversation featuring acclaimed interdisciplinary artists, writers and theorists Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar, founders of UK artist collective The Otolith Group.
Tickets are sold through VIFF.
John Akomfrah’s acclaimed three-channel film Vertigo Sea (2015) is currently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery as part of the exhibition Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change through January 10, 2027.
This special event is being presented as part of VIFF LIVE 2026, curated by Jarrett Martineau.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
John Akomfrah is a widely respected artist and filmmaker whose works are characterized by investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics. A founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah collaborates with Lina Gopaul, David Lawson and Ashitey Akomfrah as Smoking Dogs Films. His debut documentary Handsworth Songs (1986) examined the Birmingham and London riots through archival stills and contemporary footage, earning Akomfrah international acclaim and defining his visual style. Other works have included The Unfinished Conversation (2013), Vertigo Sea (2015), Purple (2017), Precarity (2018), Arcadia (2023) and Becoming Wind (2023). Through his art, Akomfrah explores climate change, migrant experiences, humanity, the natural world, economic hardship, racism and the intertwined relationship between human communities, wilderness, memory and history.
Speaker Music/ DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama–raised, ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, musician and curator, currently living within the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His written work centres on a diagnostic exploration of electronic music through considerations of applied metaphilosophy. His debut book Assembling a Black Counter Culture (2022) has been widely recognized for its critical depth. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE at Museion (Bolzano), the concluding exhibition in the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy. Brown’s work has been presented at institutions including Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Art Basel Paris, Somerset House (London) and Performa (New York). He has taught and lectured at Simon Fraser University, New York University, The New School, Harvard University, Brown University and Princeton University. Recent collaborations include liner notes for Cybotron’s Maintain the Golden Ratio (2023) and Parallel Shift (2024), developed with techno pioneer Juan Atkins and Tresor Records.
The Otolith Group, founded in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, is an artist collective whose practice spans moving image, installation, sound, photography, performance, publishing and exhibition-making. The Group has developed an interscalar practice that brings together essayistic montage, archival thinking and theory. Their works operate across multiple temporal and spatial registers, assembling images, voices, sounds and texts into cinematic forms that explore relationships of temporality and duration. The Group’s works have been commissioned and presented by museums, galleries, biennials and cultural institutions worldwide. Recent exhibitions include A Hand of Light Caressed My Eyelids, greengrassi, London (2026); MASCON: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy and MASCON: A Massive Concentration of Black Interscalar Energy, two recent works developed as part of the exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Art Institute of Chicago (2024), tour included Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2025) and Barbican Art Gallery, London (2026); A Flock of Keen-Eyed and Far-Seeing Magpies, The Otolith Library in residence at Ibraaz, London (2025–26); What the Owl Knows, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2024); Secession, Vienna (2022); and XENOGENESIS at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2022).
The Otolith Collective is the artist-led organization through which Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun develop collaborative research, commissioning, publishing, exhibitions, screenings and public programs. Extending the methodologies of The Otolith Group, the Collective creates long-term frameworks for artistic inquiry through partnerships with artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians and researchers. A central initiative is The Otolith Library, an evolving research collection assembled over more than twenty-five years through the Group’s research practice. Comprising books, journals, films, recordings, artworks and archival materials, the Library forms a living research environment that maps the conceptual constellations informing the Group’s work. Currently realized through a year-long residency at Ibraaz, London, inaugurated with A Flock of Keen-Eyed and Far-Seeing Magpies (2025–26), elements of the Library installed are activated through The Library Transmissions, an ongoing program of exhibitions, screenings, readings, conversations and performances that extends it as a site of collective study and artistic inquiry. Working across visual art, experimental film, new music, writing and post-lens-based media, The Otolith Collective has curated exhibitions and public programs with artists and thinkers including Black Audio Film Collective, Harun Farocki, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, Bahar Noorizadeh, The Chimurenga Library, Chris Marker and Mark Fisher with Justin Barton.
