Derick Armah
Zong! A Durational Reading, Soundscape + Fundraiser
A soundscape commissioned to open a durational reading of M. NourbeSe Philip’s epic, experimental poem Zong!, which honours the more than 130 Africans thrown overboard the slave ship Zong in 1781, deliberately drowned so that the ship’s owners could claim insurance compensation.
With the court judgment Gregson v. Gilbert as the sole surviving documentation of the massacre, rendering the dead not as human beings, but as ‘negroes’, ‘cargo’ and ‘property’, Philip’s work intervenes in public memory by recomposing the document into a book-length poem, reordering the language and logic of transatlantic anti-Black violence. Abstracting speech and experimenting with structure, Zong! demands recital by a collective body – multiple voices and vocalisations at times in harmony and at other moments, in conflict; a movement towards an embodied remembrance.
My soundscape opened and activated the space, an aural journey through continuities of survival and aliveness amidst structures of harm, enlivened by African diasporic musical elements, the sounds of the sea, field recordings, and soundbites from Black cultural figures such as Kano, Dr Joy White, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin.
As intended, Zong! was read collectively, by Amouraé Bhola-Chin, Edward Adonteng, Halima Ali, Kevin Kimbenga, Suleqa Mohamud, JT, Akhera Williams, and Ishy Pryce-Parchment, provoking a powerful, embodied emotional response that bordered on the spiritual. The space was closed by a live sound performance from Sanza.Moyo.
Hosted by Ishy Pryce-Parchment at London’s Kunstraum venue, the event’s proceeds supported the Solidarity Yaad International Fundraiser, in the wake of Hurricane Melissa’s devastation of Jamaican communities.
Event photography by Roshad van der Pool.
Poster design by Daniella Chukwuezi.