DECENTRALISE

posted by Emily Gosling April 9, 2021

Somerset House has launched a free, interactive digital archive that celebrates Black British art, called DECENTRALISE.

The platform is the first project to emerge from Somerset House’s Young Producers programme, which offers training, development and London Living Wage paid opportunities for emerging cultural producers aged 18-30 who are otherwise underrepresented in the cultural sector. Of more than 250 applicants, six people were chosen to form the Young Producers collective, who went on to create DECENTRALISE with London-based design studio COMUZI.The main idea behind DECENTRALISE was to create a resource which ”re-centres” Black people and gives them their rightful place within Somerset House’s cultural history. The platform is one element of Somerset House’s recently introduced “Anti-Racism Pledge“, which the organsioans says “commits to conducting, and making available, new research into what is currently understood of Somerset House’s social history.The platform centres on around 16 objects spanning design and interaction that either draw from or are inspired by past exhibitions at the London site, such as Get Up, Stand Up Now (2019) and Return of the Rudeboy (2014) to 2026: Utopian Voices Here & Now (2016). Among the object images used on the site are an illustration of a flag, inspired by A new artwork Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers’ Alliance, by Larry Achiampong (at Somerset House 2016 – 2017); a disc image drawing on BLACK TO TECHNO (2019), a film by Somerset House Studios resident Jenn Nkir; a pink patterned tile-like graphic inspired by the archives of Althea McNish, which were featured in Get Up Stand Up Now; and a photomontage-like image that references Untitled 2018, by Deborah Roberts, also featured in Get Up, Stand Up Now. The works on show were created by by Black artists and creators including GAIKA, Richard Rawlins and Althea McNish. Together, the objects work to examine themes including Afro-Nowism, Afrofuturism, Political art and “Disobedient art.”Users of the platform are encouraged to use these virtual objects as their own materials, and form their own artworks using them as tools, building blocks or jumping-off points. Each image can be used like a brush against a black canvas, or as collage elements that can be scaled and stacked. These user-generated pieces then feed back into the DECENTRALISE archive to further tease out themes from former exhibitions and consider how they relate to “the personal and collective experiences of what it means to be Black and British,” according to Somerset House.The site itself is joyfully colourful, mixing the aesthetics of comic books and net art with vapourwave skyscapes and modern day emoji-language. It’s a joyful assault of bold typography and a mishmash of vibrant colours, with some excellent sound design by Wu-Lu, which offers users a sort of live soundtrack to your tinkerings. We’re going to be brave here and bring back the term “edutainment”. Why? Because in the hours we lost playing with the site, we learned a lot, and had a hell of a lot of (very maximal) fun.