Public Library UK Vol 1, After Kenneth Little, 2024
A limited edition spoken-word vinyl double LP about immigration and its legacies in Britain.
80 minutes.
Launch of 'Public Library UK Vol 1, After Kenneth Little'
Richard Hylton will be joined by Dr Althea Rivas (chair) Tom Denman (art critic) Paul Nataraj (artist) to discuss their responses to the project
SOAS, Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre (BGLT) , Thursday 16 January 2025, 6.30-8.30pm.
Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little is a participatory spoken-word work. Thirty-seven volunteers read consecutive excerpts from the American sociologist Leonard Bloom’s introduction to the 1972 edition of Kenneth Little’s Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society. Bloom argued that Little’s book brought hitherto unseen nuance to the study of immigration. It was originally published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1948, a year now fabled as the beginning of the ‘Windrush generation’. Little’s study, however, focused on the impact of immigration on Butetown, the dock area of Cardiff, Wales during the interwar years of the twentieth century. Nicknamed Tiger Bay, this district was noted for its multiethnic population, drawn from Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, and for being the epicentre of notorious race riots in 1919.
With the practice of anthropological field recordings in mind, Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little considers, not histories of societies and cultures of faraway people and faraway lands, but instead those closer to home. Drawing from a formidable archive of literature, Public Library UK Vol I excavates histories, terminologies, and observations which are both archaic and prescient. Perennially reprised, centuries old anxieties around immigration and race relations, often odious and futile, are given new perspectives here. In Public Library UK Vol I the non-professional readers deliver passages modulated by varying accents and intonations. Although not visible, they are as much the subject of the work as the words they utter.
Information
Devised and produced by Richard Hylton, Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little is a limited-edition work, produced as two 140g vinyl LPs presented in an extensively illustrated gatefold design including illuminating liner notes, Public Library: Some Considerations by Eddie Chambers and, Sonic Fictions of Unsettlement by Salomé Voegelin. Eddie Chambers is David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, and Salomé Voegelin is Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK. The album’s pressing was made possible through a Research Culture Award from SOAS.
Readers:
Simon Aeppli
Elizabeth Baxter
David Blackmore
Katherine Boxall
Jim Burbidge
Judy Campion
Dal Chodha
Ellie Doggett
Maren Hahnfeld
Simon Harper
Paula Harris
Stuart Hilton
Richard Hylton
Kay Hylton
Sashi Kahlon
Victoria Kelley
Alison Manning
Lisa Moore
Saima Mustaq
Simon Olding
Philip Osborne
Chrissie Ralph
Jeremy Ralph
Elle Reynolds
Laura Rowe
Kate Street
Ivy Tessmann
Mia Thurnhill
Reuben Thurnhill
Urjuan Toosy
Ellie Turner
Emmanuelle Waeckerle
Fiona White
James Wright
Devised, Produced and Recorded: Richard Hylton
Sound Editing: Oliver Schmidt
Photoshop Images: Reuben Thurnhill
Design: Urjuan Toosy
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UK Price £55 (postage +packaging included).
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