Vertigo Sea (2015) is the most important Akomfrah work that will be screened at Seattle Art Museum. Credit: COURTESY OF SMOKING DOGS FILMS, LISSON GALLERY
Vertigo Sea (2015) is the most important Akomfrah work that will be screened at Seattle Art Museum.
Vertigo Sea (2015) is the most important Akomfrah work that will be screened at Seattle Art Museum. COURTESY OF SMOKING DOGS FILMS, LISSON GALLERY

This feature was a part of our Art and Performance Spring 2020 quarterly. That issue was published right as COVID-19 hit Seattle in March. Museums abruptly shut down and the features never made it online. Now, with museums reopening, we’ve decided to publish some of the package. —Eds. Note

Before I say something about John Akomfrah, a filmmaker whose works are primarily shown in museums rather than movie theaters, let me say something about philosophy.

In the 1992 track “Don’t Sweat the Technique,” Rakim, the greatest rapper in the history of hip-hop, described the difference between a scientist and a philosopher: “Scientists try to solve the context / Philosophers are wondering what’s next.” The job of a man or a woman in a lab is to determine how the substances of something come together to produce a function or an effect. The man or woman in an armchair, on the other hand, wants to determine how the related elements of a given culture or moment will unfold in time. The philosopher is oriented to the future.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...