Screening and Conversation
Admission:
General $10
Student $7
June 5, 2025, 7pm–12am
Brooklyn NY 11205
USA
Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, June 5 at 7pm for “Scenes of Labor,” a screening of selected films by Karimah Ashadu. Filmed in Nigeria between 2013 and 2022, the films in this program focus on various modes of labor within informal economies and the spatial conditions that surround them. Ashadu’s use of self-built experimental filming devices recurs across several works, shaping a distinct filmic language that responds to the visual and rhythmic specificities of the milieus in which she works.
This program is presented in collaboration with Canal Projects alongside the exhibition Machine Boys, on view from May 9 to July 26, 2025. The screening will be introduced by a special pre-recording from Ashadu, alongside in-person remarks from Sofia Thiệu D’Amico and Caroline Taylor Shehan of Canal Projects.
Films
Apapa Amusement Park (2013, 3 minutes)
Apapa Amusement Park, once a fully operational playground in Lagos and a familiar childhood stomping ground of the artist, is now abandoned. The film captures youths playing football, momentarily animating the blank space as the eagerness of their game hints at the formerly fun-filled atmosphere of the park. The work is filmed with a small rotational device which alters perception. Handmade from found materials, the device is inspired by the location’s rotund geometry. The moving image is intercepted by the mechanism’s convex glass, moving simultaneously with the camera to magnify aspects of the footage—almost like a stutter.
King of Boys (Abattoir of Makoko) (2015, 5 minutes)
“King of Boys”—a street term given to a man in charge of a specific territory or group of “area boys” in Lagos, Nigeria. King of Boys is a window into the abattoir of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria. Men butcher heads of bulls and rams. Decapitated heads with raging horns, once brutal, docilely await the butcher’s block. Nothing is wasted; horns, offal, bone, skin, all destined for distinct uses. Deftly wielding heavy axes and large sharp knives, precision is key; a rhythm arises. A mechanism—an analog filter made from a found object—a red beer keg, tints the image. As the artist turns the mechanism, the camera shifts between a state of fantasy and reality, offering snippets of the real and engulfing us into the dream-like state of a red-filtered world.
Lagos Sand Merchants (2013, 9 minutes)
Lagos Sand Merchants focuses on a group of “sand merchants” on the outskirts of Lagos, arduously trawling the Lagos State Lagoon to unearth sand deep from the river bed, which will later be offered to the construction industry for sale. Paused by the lagoon’s edge, the sand merchants employ modest straw baskets to retrieve the heavy wet sand from river bed to boat, and then to the shore where they cluster in heavy heaped mounds. The film’s “rotate mechanism”—a dynamic revolving device that challenges spatial perception—becomes a mirror for the task, producing a rhythmic quality that reflects the monotonous yet poetic relationship between the merchants and the lagoon.
Plateau (2021–22, 30 minutes)
Plateau profiles a group of undocumented tin-miners in Nigeria’s Jos-Plateau state and explores the socio-economic implications of their activities. Before Nigeria’s independence, Plateau State was central to the mining of minerals such as tin and columbite. Tin deposits were discovered in Jos-Plateau and the British colonial regime which at the time enabled foreign companies to exploit the area. In late-70s and 80s post-colonialism, many of these companies ceased and workers became redundant. Having gained the skills and knowledge of mining, these workers formed small communities and began digging the land for mineral deposits, as a way towards their independence. They passed their skills on to future generations. In the present day, mining continues with a whole host of complications. Without adequate machinery, the process is rudimentary and unmonitored, posing grave challenges to miners, inhabitants of Jos-Plateau state, and the surrounding ecosystem.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to program [at] e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave (garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
