The Only Good System is a Sound System

Writing Commission from the ICO for the Second Sight Tour: In this essay, writer and programmer Reba Martin discusses B.O.S.S Collective’s Collective Hum, one of the new commissions in our Second Sight film tour exploring the legacy, methods, aesthetic strategies and histories of the UK’s Black Film Workshop Movement. https://secondsightessays.co.uk/2020/12/01/the-only-good-system-is-a-sound-system/ What is the sound of this collective in black collective cinema? Articulating complex feelings, ideas, and history in films that embrace both video and audio pleasure as well as narrative displacement (1) are a trademark of collective and workshop black filmmaking in the UK. B.O.S.S. have detected and expanded within this territory in Collective Hum that traces this between testimony, memory, nostalgia, and documentary to mediate our perception of abundance.