In Conversation: Onyeka Igwe & Test Dept
Artist-filmmaker Onyeka Igwe talks with industrial music pioneers Test Dept, moderated by curator and archivist Andrea Zarza Canova.

Somerset House, London
Saturday 28 March. 4:15

Taking Igwe’s Assembly performance No archive can restore this chorus of (diasporic) shame as its point of departure, the conversation brings together artists whose sound work shares an exploration of protest, resistance, and the collective voice.

No archive can restore this chorus of (diasporic) shame sees a 13-person a cappella choir reimagining songs from the Egba Market Women's Revolt (1947) — a seminal anti-colonial protest — found in the archive of educator and activist Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, composed into a new song cycle by artist and musician Tanya Auclair. Interlacing the work’s choral arrangement is a collection of field recordings, video and spoken testimonials from Igwe’s research gathered over the last five years.

In 1984, South London industrial experimentalists Test Dept recorded Shoulder to Shoulder with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir, a collaborative album in support of the 1984-85 miners’ strike that combined traditional Welsh choral song with Test Dept’s signature percussive intensity. Together they toured nationally, raising money and awareness, with all profits going to the striking workers.

Andrea Zarza Canova joins Igwe and Test Dept members Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy to discuss both projects and the political, archival, and collaborative dimensions of their practices.

Photo ©Toni Sutcliffe