A Conversation with Akinbode Akinbiyi

“There Is a Creative Side to Everyone”

In addition to lectures, music, and film, the Edward W. Said Days present an exhibition of works by the photographer, author, and curator Akinbode Akinbiyi. In his images—also found in this program book— we encounter unsettling depictions of movement that always ask the same question: Where and what is home? Amel Ouaissa spoke with the artist.

These three days focus on the subject of counterpoint—in musical terms, the combination of several voices that are harmonically interdependent, yet melodically and rhythmically independent. Do you see such contrapuntal ideas in your own work as well?

I’ve been thinking about this ever since I received the invitation to the Edward W. Said Days, but I don’t seem to have reached a conclusion. My way of seeing things always implies a certain give and take: I look at something, I experience it, but I observe it not only from my own point of view, but from different perspectives. This often results in contrasts, counterpoints, if you will, that complement each other. In general as a human being, I strive for harmony, but there isn’t only one way to find and to explore this harmony. This is why I always try to remain open to many different aspects and approaches to a certain phenomenon—an image, in my case.

According to Said, anything that has a capacity for a plurality of voices can be contrapuntal—including the state of exile. He didn’t necessarily consider exile as a harmonic construct or a harmonic reality, but rather saw it as a restlessness, a way of being driven or a state of driving others. The exiled person is happy, so to speak, with this notion of “unhappiness”…

I can relate very well to this definition of exile. Especially today, there are so many refugees; it has taken on a terrible dimension, and many of them do not really feel at home in the societies that take them in. Personally, I see myself as a wanderer—but I know that the possibility of wandering is a certain privilege. Wanderers always bring their own baggage, their biographies, their experiences. It’s important to accept these experiences and realities, these people as equals, and perhaps walk a bit of the way with them. You begin to see the world in a different light, and in my opinion, over time you can feel at home anywhere—still wandering, but mostly in order to understand your own humanity.

So you look for everyday moments of tolerance, of harmony—in another context, you called it “child-like moments of innocence.” Still, you manage to render the rough realities you capture in your photography in an “unfiltered” manner…

Tolerance is very important to me. When I am confronted with situations of chaos or crisis, I try to focus on elements of calm or moments of tolerance. There are certain threads in life, lines of thought, lines of movement… Artists try to take up these lines of movement in different ways, to describe them or to express them in music. Wandering brings these lines to my attention. Sometimes I discover glaring counter-cuts and contrasts in this way, followed by sudden moments of quiet—and that’s what I try to capture. I work with analogue film, so I have to develop the images, look at contact sheets, and try to crystallize what I have experienced. Everyone filters. I try to redefine my filter over and over again, to gain new perspectives. Some realities are terrible, unbearable even: war, poverty, destitution. When I w ander through such realities, the question I ask myself is: what I am doing here now? Am I a voyeur, a flaneur, an uninvolved, privileged person? Or am I a person trying to understand, to help gradually improve these miserable situations? I try to be the latter—it’s important to tell people about such misery, in my case, show pictures. I almost always do so through series of pictures, so that the viewers— at least that is my hope—can develop an understanding for the situation. My approach is very narrative, I think it’s important to spin stories—I like this expression—and spin them further. We listen or listen in, that makes us the bearers of a story, and sometimes sad, horrible stories emerge, but occasionally they are also very beautiful.

What made you accept our invitation to show your work at the Edward W. Said Days?

I believe that Edward Said’s intellectual legacy is more relevant today than ever. I find the continuation of his ideas, and those of Daniel Barenboim, in this academy very important. The Barenboim-Said Akademie gives young people from the Middle East and North Africa the opportunity to come together and to study together—that’s wonderful. I also think its artistic approach to conveying knowledge is impressive. If you ask me, it would be ideal for every person to be trained as an artist, in a certain way: students, teachers, and also those who consider themselves artists already. It’s the educational institutions especially—from elementary schools to universities—that can contribute decisively to the way in which future generations will rise to the challenges of this world. It seems to me that the dissatisfaction, small-mindedness, and perversion we encounter in our current political and social debates indicate that we still have a long way to go. In German there’s an expression, Kochkunst, “culinary art.” Politics can also be an art, everything can be art. Artistic values can counteract the increasing materialism and craving for recognition of our times—projects such as the Barenboim-Said Akademie, education in general, my pictures… I have two grandsons who are almost two and almost three years old, and they also talk, telling stories, and I hope that they become active, engaged human beings. There is a “creative” side to everyone, to a photographer and a cellist just as much as to a carpenter or a politician.