A Heavy Nonpresence: Ingrid Pollard Artist Talk & Screening

As part of In formation, writer and researcher Derica Shields presents A Heavy Nonpresence, a two-part programme of events that imagines a borderless space that is not national, where we receive care and live without shame, fear and disproportionate vulnerability to premature death. Where is this fictional place and is it possible to belong there? Who has imagined it before?    

Part I is an artist talk by Ingrid Pollard (ICA Lower Gallery, 6.30pm) followed by a screening and discussion of selected film and video by Ja’Tovia Gary, Black Audio Film Collective and from the British Pathé Archive (ICA Cinema 1, 8.15pm). Join us to think together about the racialised constructions of the English countryside foregrounded by Ingrid Pollard’s land/place-oriented photographic practice, and the issues around welfare, anti-Black violence and displacement raised by the screening program.

Part II of this series (Sunday 20 August) and is an afternoon of workshops and discussion for women affected by social service cuts organising to assist each other.

About A Heavy Nonpresence

I'd rather live outside.
- Frank Ocean, Seigfried 

In the spirit of all imperfect practitioners of petit marronage, A Heavy Nonpresence is interested in black failure – failures of assimilation, inclusion, separatism and of Black belonging in Britain. In place of political action that wants to expand the parameters of civil society to include Black people, or to bring us under the protection (and control) of the state, this series asks what is being done amid and despite exclusionary and assimilationist moves. What can we do among ourselves, maybe in secret?    

Derica Shields is a writer, editor, and programmer from London. She has previously written and edited for The New Inquiry, Rookie, Okayafrica and published work most recently in Girls Like Us and Flash Art. Her research interests include Blackness, futurisms, literature, visual art and film. She is the co-founder of The Future Weird, a (now defunct, but still loved) screening and discussion series centered on experimental films by Black directors. She holds degrees in English and Africana Studies from the universities of Cambridge and Cornell.

Ingrid Pollard is a London-based photographer, media artist and researcher. She is a graduate of the London College of Printing and Derby University. Ingrid has developed a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens-based media. Her work is included in numerous collections including the UK Arts Council and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She lives and works in London, UK.

Ja’Tovia M. Gary is an artist and filmmaker currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Gary’s work confronts traditional notions of representation, race, gender, sexuality and power. She earned her MFA in Social Documentary Filmmaking from a private for-profit art school in New York City. Gary has presented her work at universities, museums and cultural institutions worldwide including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYU Florence, Chicago’s Black Cinema House, Indiana University Cinema, Goldsmiths University, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, ICA Boston, MoMA, MoMA PS1 and the Made in New York Media Center.