Baff Akoto

 

Raised in London and Accra, Baff Akoto is a conceptual artist whose practice spans VR, AR, motion graphics, performance and cinema.  His work embraces the fluidity of visual grammar and is concerned with notions of plurality, (self) perceptions and the societal implications of human bodily movement (disability, ritual, dance).   

 

Most recently Akoto's practice explores the artistic potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies as he interrogates how the digital revolution might avoid the same prejudices, exclusions and inequalities which arose from our industrial and colonial eras.

Artistic Purpose and Value in the Digital Age

Dr Zoé Whitley in Conversation with Baff Akoto

 

The global COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated the digitisation of culture arguably allowing for broader access whilst simultaneously expanding the possibilities and our collective understanding of the experiential artistic practice.

 

One such example is UP:RISE, a groundbreaking Augmented Reality public artwork by conceptual artist Baff Akoto which exhibited nationwide this summer. Almost concurrently, Chisenhale Gallery partnered with digital art platform CIRCA to present a series of new video works across a network of iconic outdoor video screens.

 

During this talk commissioned as part of the Guest Projects Digital 2021 programme; historian, curator and Chisenhale Gallery Director Dr. Zoé Whitley is joined by Akoto to discuss the imagined potential of an increasingly digitised cultural landscape and its power and ability to democratise access to art both within the public realm and traditional gallery spaces.

UP:RISE

UP:RISE is a groundbreaking Augmented Reality public artwork by artist Baff Akoto concerned with the pathology, history and underlying drivers of English civil unrest. It marks a step change in the conception of public and socially engaged artistic practice in the digital era.

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