Since 2018, artist and dancer Zinzi Minott (UK) has released a new version of her annual series Fi Dem. These moving-image works explore both the histories of the Windrush Generation, and broader histories and experiences of Blackness, migration, and living in the diaspora. Each iteration is a visual manifestation of a year lived: lives moved and moving. Within Let the Song Hold Us, we present the 2022 instalment: Fi Dem V - A Redemptive Song, developed in response to Liverpool.
Focusing on the city's Caribbean community, Minott explores Liverpool’s history as a port and its part in the Atlantic slave trade, as well as amplifying the current struggles of Merseyside's Windrush community. Moments of dance, celebration and joy are contrasted and glitched with archival footage of the arrival of the Windrush generation, and discussion around the uncertain future of a community Caribbean Centre - highlighting the precarity perpetuated by political and civic systems in the UK.
Download the transcript below.
