Title:
Lagos Island

Year:
2012

Running time:
4 minutes, 44 seconds

Format:
HD digital film, colour with sound

Location:
Lagos, Nigeria

Awards:
‘ARTE Creative Newcomer Award’, ’26th European Media Art Festival’

‘Ken Burns Best of the Festival Award’, 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival

‘The Camera Wheel Mechanism’ forces the viewer to engage in the tension created from its performance, and the ensuing constantly changing perspective. As it is pushed, the camera records in a state of flux while encased within the mechanism.

As if in turmoil, the moving image of the Lagos Island coastline offers a poignant narrative for its occupants.

Migrants perch near the water in trepidation. They build fleeting homes
which the Lagos government will soon force down, in a bid to clean up the City.
The atmosphere is tense and fraught. And although the ‘Camera Wheel Mechanism’
brings an element of play, its ephemeral nature is highly evocative.

The ‘Camera Wheel Mechanism’ is made from found objects, and is inspired by the various hawkers and labourers in Lagos,
who use carts to transport their goods
and wares. Often heavily laden and hard to manoeuvre, these carts embody the daily struggle of life in Lagos.