The Otolith Group was founded in London by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002.
They are interdisciplinary artists working internationally for over two decades with a pluralistic body of forms including, installation, publication, performance, photography and video. Their practice observes methods of research that manifest as distinct cosmogonies that see and listen across media. Sounds, texts and images emerge in dialogue with the cultural worlds and communities of the global majority who form the continents and countries of the global south and its diasporas.
Their research emerges through collaborations, friendships and affinities with the living and the dead; Artists, theorists, philosophers, poets and composers such as Greg Tate, Mark Fisher, Mahmoud Darwish, Eyal Weizman, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Susan Schuppli, Saidiya Hartman, Drexciya, Steve Goodman, DeForrest Brown Jnr, Gerald Donald, Remnant of a Hydrogen Particle, Chris Marker, Julius Eastman, Etel Adnan, Elaine Mitchener, Kathryn Yusoff, Fred Moten, Jean Genet to name but a few.
Transnational events, photographic archives, movements, compositions, theories, performances, vocalities, poetics in sound and in moving and non-moving images are woven, improvised and pursued as an ongoing experiment with the film essay.
The name 'Otolith' originates from an early artwork titled 'Otolith (2003)'. This work involved an in-depth encounter with Zero Gravity at the Cosmonaut Training Centre at Star City near Moscow and provided us with a conceptual and scientific thought-form that could help us metabolize thicken and spatialize the complexities of our time.
For TOG the calcium carbonate microcrystals of the otolith crystals that sit within the inner ear, operate as a kind of black box or a memory recorder or as agravic sensors that support withholding intention, gauging impact, measuring expectation and calculating discrepancy.
The Otolith Group's work has been exhibited internationally and this site is an archive of their past, current and future work.
