Scanned handwritten notes and writing on a notepad

The co-curatorial “working group” is formed by six creative practitioners based in Scotland, Hannah McGurk,Yemurai Chaza, Cat Dunn, Layla-Roxanne Hill, Rebecca Ayalew, Hannah Moitt.

Each session is facilitated by selected Black artists and practitioners to respond to the project’s themes and design a remote session, held either on Zoom or/and through other forms of remote delivery (post, blogs etc).

The series of closed workshops which position the theory of hauntology as the central critical lens will collectively and radically imagine what building a library of diasporic knowledge could be.

Library of Frequencies

Library of Frequencies is a collaborative working group established with artist and arts educator Shamica Ruddock. The project explores alternative knowledge(s) rooted in the traditions of oral histories, using the theory of hauntology as a critical lens.

The working group centres oral histories within the African Diaspora in Scotland. Each sessions has responded to the concept of oral histories through restorative conversations, sound and film workshops and writing sessions between a group of six collaborators. Our dialogues seek to formulate libraries of alternative knowledge in the twenty-first century.

‘It is through sound that I seek a deeper engagement with the forgotten histo-ries and suppressed forms of diasporic memory that these images trans- mit. I theorize sound as an inherently embodied process that registers at multiple levels of the human sensorium.’
Campt, T (2017). Listening to Images. ‎ Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press Books.

In the last year we have worked with six creative practitioners for our ‘Library of Frequencies’ project. This series included a cameraless film workshop, screening and presentation by artist Ufuoma Essi and Shamica Ruddock; ‘Listening with the Body: A workshop in hauntology’ with Ashanti Harris; An online focused reading of chapter 14 Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence by Ruth Wilson Gilmore; In Futures of Black Radicalism lead by Imani Jordan; Kitso Lynn Lelliot invited the collaborators to read and annotate Grandma’s Story the final chapter of Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism by Trinh T. Minh-Ha; our last session was a voice guide by Mandla Rae retelling myths and tales from the Southern African spiritual beliefs.