Leviathan Cycle, Episode 7: Africana, Ken Bugul & Nemo, 2022

Commissioned by Toronto Biennial of Art and Leviathan - Human & Marine Ecology. Courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions.

Click here to view a trailer.

Click here for more information about the Leviathan Cycle.

Episode 7: Africana, Ken Bugul & Nemo (2022) is part of Shezad Dawood’s expansive film series Leviathan Cycle, in turn an integral element of his major long-term multimedia project Leviathan (2017–ongoing), which considers the intersections of both human and non-human ecologies in relation to climate change, migration, and mental health.

Episode 7 is intertidal, locating itself in and as mangrove by speaking to interconnectedness and enmeshment. Situated in the second half of Leviathan Cycle, this episode moves beyond an exploration of environmental, physical, and psychological breakdown to instead consider new strategies for working and living together.

The film’s fluid journey through Senegalese landscapes moves in tandem with accounts by participants – the writer Ken Bugul and the lawyer and community organiser Africana, both actively concerned with de-colonial practices – who have been invited to image and imagine themselves as their future selves. This discursive, collaborative exercise in place-making is one where both science and the imaginary dovetail into a possible, collective futurology. In blending fact and speculative fiction, narrative and documentary, Shezad enacts a unique, sliding temporal scale that underlies the entire Leviathan project, connecting deep time to tentative futurity.