LIFT’s long-standing partnership with Battersea Arts Centre offers in-festival research time and space to emerging artists. Working with the British Council, LIFT 2018 invited West African artists Poetra Asantewa and Kwame Boafo to develop new work in their chosen art form, as well as having access to everything the festival has to offer.
On this project I was a Camera Operator and Video Editor. Both Kwame Boafo and Poetra Asantewa have unique methods of creating their art, especially Kwame since he is a movement artist. I felt it was important to represent Kwame's and Poetra's unique styles via the pace of the edit, colour grading and music choice.
Kwame Boafo is a performance and movement artist who explores the idea of the body as a vessel of historical memory. During the residency, he continued his investigation into how people make (dis)connection with everyday material objects and how it reminds them of past experiences. Kwame's film is much more abstract, contrasts red and blue, and the interview is disrupted by moments of Kwame's movement artistry to play out on-screen.
Poetra Asantewa is a poet, writer, spoken word artist and vocalist from Ghana. Her work as a performer and youth mentor engages issues of feminism, inequality and mental health in her community. During the residency, she explored the contrasts and parallels between dynamic performance poetry and the power of static poetry on the page. Poetra Asantewa poetry/spoken word feels warm and is a bit more structural and deliberate hence the even warmish colour grade, the deliberate pans and tilts and the mellow music as a backing track.
Companies
Battersea Arts Centre
- Arts and Culture
LIFT Festival
- Arts and Culture
British Council Arts
- Arts and Culture