In The names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered, Onyeka Igwe is trying to tell a truth in as many ways as possible. The same story is told in four different ways: a folktale of two brothers rendered in the broad, unmodulated strokes of colonial British moving images; a Nollywood TV series, on VHS, based on the first published Igbo novel; a story of the family patriarch, passed down through generations; and the diary entries from the artist’s first solo visit to her family’s hometown. Igwe pushes against the materials of the archive—its distortions, fabrications and embellishments—with her own kind of autofictional response. The artist summons a variety of artistic, literary and personal sources to create a singular biographical document of many strands. The film throws the ordinary and the everyday within the archive into relief by daring to write and re-write the stories of diasporic African life against the grain of colonial history’s master narratives. (Tendai John Mutambu)

Beulah Ezeugo (Éireann and I): I was thinking about how a lot of black practitioners who work with or within the archive are often looking for something… or I guess, trying to locate themselves somewhere.

I was listening to your talk at the British School at Athens [‘Being Close to, with or Amongst: other ways of Knowing the Archive’]. There’s a bit where you’re describing a particular research session, and you said something like ‘I want to be done, but there might be something here, perhaps a discovery’. And so, I’m interested in hearing about when you first encountered the story in the film and what you were looking to discover at that point, I guess.

Onyeka Igwe: I’m not really sure exactly when I first encountered this story. It’s a story that was just in the family. I don’t remember when it was first told, but I remember always kind of knowing, having this inkling or hearing these phrases about my grandfather. But, in terms of trying to go looking for something… I was curious about my father’s family. I didn’t really grow up with him so I’m kind of disconnected from [his] side of the family. And so that’s how the film expanded – I started asking about my grandfather, and he told me that I should look at this book called Omenuko. That kind of prompted this idea of retelling the story in multiple ways.

BE: Did you feel that any gaps were filled at all by speaking to your father? Or did you learn something about how he approached [your grandfather’s story]? In the film there’s a bit of a discrepancy in how you each engage with it.

OI: Yeah, definitely. I find it funny that I was interested in deepening or extending some kind of relationship with my father, by asking him these questions. And that his response was that I should go and read a book, one that he hadn’t actually read.

BE: [Laughs]

OI: So that definitely wasn’t a satisfactory encounter. It left more questions than answers. At one point, it felt a little bit like this film was my attempt to get to grips with masculinity; the role in which masculinity has played in my life and the role in which men have played in my life. So I kind of laugh sometimes when I think about the route I took to make this film. But yeah, my encounter with my father kind of left a lot of gaps…I had to just ask my mum!

[Both Laugh]

OI: She filled a lot of these gaps in because she very much is the keeper of these histories and is connected to all networks within our family; her sisters, her cousins, other people in the village which both my parents are from. She’s the person that can contact them and ask these questions, which is not the kind of role that my father has.

BE: I like how you described your mom as ‘a keeper of stories’.  That’s quite nice… and it’s also interesting how that role is always gendered in a very strange way.

OI: Yes, I asked her and she was able to really extend my knowledge of this history, the history of my grandfather, also the history of the village. In the part of Nigeria that my family is from, your mother’s village is the marker of your identity. I went to Nigeria and visited the birthplace of this village, and I learned a lot more from that experience.

BE: We’ve been talking with Alice [Rekab] a bit, about the intersections of the work we’re doing. They’ve been thinking about what it means to be an artist, and also a second-generation migrant, and having this desire to explore or represent experiences that the people that came before you didn’t have the space to conceptualise or give language to in the same way… and we’ve been quite into the film and your work for that reason.

OI: Yeah, I think it’s kind of strange that I chose to use the traditional archives as a tool to think through my family history, because my family history is not found in those archives. So it already was a kind of incongruous relationship. But I guess it kind of shows the way in which I’ve been educated and socialised… my very British upbringing! I think that this research that I’ve been doing is very much research of diaspora, of this kind of existence as a second-generation migrant, being in the middle, being of two places that are different and similar in terms of the world-views that exist in them. And I guess the reason why there are so many different retellings of the same story [in the film], is to hint or point towards the fact that there are many ways of coming to knowledge. And the ways in which I  interacted with [the story] reflect something of my location and positionality.

BE: Yes, and thinking in terms of different ways of knowing, I really enjoyed how you used movements in the film – the scenes where you and Titilayo Adebayo are performing together! I think it took me a second to receive the story that way because I too really enjoy documents, and I was very hungry for images and words.

But yes, I do want to talk a bit about the limits of language, when it comes to understanding or disseminating a story, and I guess the ways through which you unhinge power from language.

OI: I’ve kind of been interested in the ways in which dance, movement and gesture can be a communicative tool in and of themselves, and I’ve dabbled with trying that. But this film was the first time that I pushed it a little bit further by having the sections that were mostly movement. There is some sound and words in there as well, I wasn’t quite confident enough to leave it strictly at movement. It felt important to me to explore other modes of communication. I think sound has also been something that I’ve experimented with. Sound without voice, without language. Those are the two main ways in which I think or experienced things without using words, and so I’ve tried to use that in my own films and in my own artwork.

BE: Yeah, I was reading about a so-called archive and I think someone described what you were doing there as exploring sonic shadows within the archive, which, I quite liked!

IO: Yes!

BE: Joselle [Ntumba] and I [through Éireann and I] are exploring how communities can know or tell stories. And something that we think about a lot is how our work can be remedial. So, I was going to ask if there is a restorative potential in your work for you? And if there is, how do you receive it?

OI: Oh, how do I receive it? That’s a big one to think about.

[Both laugh]

OI: I talked a little bit earlier about how in many ways this film was about me confronting or thinking about masculinity and my relationship with my father, I think making the film was incredibly restorative in that way. My father lives in Nigeria, but he comes to London fairly frequently. He came [to London] to see a screening of this film. There was actually a dramatic miscommunication and we didn’t end up going to the screening together, but hearing him talk about it afterwards closed a loop in my thinking through or dealing with that aspect of my relationship with him and the male figures in my life.

But in general, when I make films it is often about thinking through a problem, an idea, an issue, or a notion. And that, for me, is like a restorative process, all in all. To begin something and see it through to the end. And then, more importantly, engaging with the conversations that come about, from putting it into the world. I’m really open to those conversations – they are often really generative for me. They allow me to see things in ways that I won’t be able to see by myself.

*

Beulah Ezeugo is an Igbo curator, researcher, and artist, currently based in Glasgow, whose work centres on Black postcolonial dreaming using collective memory and myth. Her practice is informed by a Social Science background from University College Dublin and an MLitt in Curatorial Practice from Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow. She currently develops and curates the migrant memory platform, Éireann and I with Joselle Ntumba.

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She is born and based in London, UK.

Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question —  how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatiality,  and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers. She uses embodiment, voice, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a format that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. The work comprises untying strands and threads, anchored by a rhythmic editing style, as well as close attention to the dissonance, reflection and amplification that occurs between image and sound.

Onyeka’s video works have been screened at Artists’ Film Club: Black Radical Imagination, ICA, London, 2017; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, 2020, and at film festivals internationally including the London Film Festival, 2015 and 2020; Rotterdam International, Netherlands, 2018, 2019 and 2020; Edinburgh Artist Moving Image, 2016; Images Festival, Canada, 2019, and the Smithsonian African American film festival, USA, 2018.

Solo projects include Corrections, with Aliya Pabani, Trinity Square Video, Toronto, Canada, 2018, and There Were Two Brothers, Jerwood Arts, 2019.

Recent group projects include KW Production Series, Berlin, Germany, 2020, New Labor Movements, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, USA, [POST] Colonial Bodies II, CC Matienzo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019, there’s something in the conversation that is more interesting than the finality of (a title), The Showroom, London, UK, 2018; and World Cup!, articule, Montreal, Canada, 2018.

Forthcoming exhibitions include, Reconfigured, (group show), Timothy Taylor New York, USA,  and a so-called archive, (solo show),  LUX, London, UK and THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM(solo show), Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada, all 2021.

She was awarded 2020 Arts Foundation Futures Award for Experimental Short Film and was the recipient of the Berwick New Cinema Award in 2019. Onyeka’s work is distributed by LUX.

Onyeka Igwe, The names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered

United Kingdom, 2019
25 minutes, 48 seconds, Colour, Stereo, 16:9
Original format: HD Video, 2K Video

Image: Onyeka Igwe, The names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered (still). Courtesy of the artist and LUX.