Jab Jab Essex. 2022
Audio
8:11 minutes
This dense, rhythmic sound work, created to accompany A Jab Jab Awakening Towards a New Essex, engages the body as a site of resistance, inversion, and refusal. Built from layered sounds of the conch shell and drum, the composition draws on the ritual and carnivalesque traditions of Jab Jab, where performance becomes a strategy for confronting historical violence. Its hypnotic intensity evokes the alternative future Essex imagined in Chapter three, where collective recovery is realised through a transformative Caribbean ritual.
Commissioned by Focal Point Gallery as part of the solo exhibition Othered in a region that has been historically Othered, 2022. Funded by Arts Council England, Focal Point Gallery and Southend-on-Sea City Council.
Credits: Conceived by Elsa James with Drums performed by Ken Lawrence and Conch Shell by Niles Hailstones. Designed and shaped by Trevor Mathison; Film stills: Andy Delaney
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