The Black Interior Audio Edit, 2022
Duration: 12:16 minutes, loop
The Black Interior Audio Edit is a fragmented sonic work that accompanies the installation The Black Interior, which brings together archival traces of British popular culture with the documented narratives of racism in Essex. Layering distorted excerpts from 1970s and 1980s television with ambient noise and sounds of rupture, the audio exposes how racist logics persist—shifting form rather than disappearing. Operating between audibility and obscurity, the audio resists clarity, holding the listener within a space of tension where microaggressions and historical residue converge. It speaks to the ongoing condition of Black life as lived between hypervisibility and erasure, where what is heard is never fully resolved, and what is felt exceeds what can be said.
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; Designed and shaped by Trevor Mathison; Installation photos: Anna Lukula
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