Weyland McKenzie – Witter is working with the SLG’s youth collective, the Art Assassins, on an exciting new project.
We sat down with him to find out more about what he’s got planned!
Can you tell us a bit about you and your work?
I am an audio artist, creative producer, writer and archivist in-training from north-east London. I am also founder and director of the NELLO production house, a creative production house which focuses on productions, exhibitions, creative workshops and more. In the past year NELLO’s award nominated multimedia archive project Assata’s Chant and Other Histories has exhibited in London and California. Over the last few years my work has enabled me to develop a practice of utilising existing, but also contributing to the development of new, archival catalogues in order to make them accessible and digestible for both grassroots and mass audiences.
As an audio producer I have produced on Small Axe: The Podcast the companion for Steve McQueen’s award-winning series, Spotify’s award winning series Decode, BBC ‘s Who Was Michael X, The Echoic Archive for Somerset House, as well developing and presenting The Black and The Green a BBC Radio 4 doc on climate change. I am currently the producer of the BBC 1Xtra Rap Show with Kenny Allstar and work with professor Kehinde Andrews on the Make It Plain Podcast.
How did you become an Audio Artist? How do you describe this as a practice?
I have always been an audio lover. As a child I would listen to tape cassettes of different stories overnight before bed and I fell in love with storytelling through audio. Mix that with a love for music and an audio artist is born. I define myself as an audio artist as the majority of my creative work is in the audio medium be that podcasts, music, radio, audio documentaries , interviews or oral histories. It is how I can best describe and present my thoughts.
You’re working with SLG’s youth collective, the Art Assassins on an exciting new project. What can you tell us about that right now?
I am currently working with the Art Assassins to develop an audio project that looks at the current role and future of gallery spaces by reaching out and speaking to the local community.
So far it has been amazing, the group is very inspiring to me. We are at the point where some Art Assassins are going into the world with microphones to record and I am excited to see what they come back with. The majority of the group are visual artists so it is interesting to see them working with a new medium.
What do you hope the Art Assassins get out of the project? And what do you hope to get?
I hope that the Art Assassins see the power of audio as a medium for storytelling that they can hopefully take with them in their future work. I also hope they are able to connect with the community of south London through the process of creating this project. As an artist who loves collaboration I am looking forward to learning from the Art Assassins as they experiment with the medium.
If you could give your 16 year old self any advice, what would that be?
Keep listening to your inner voice. It never fails you.
What’s next for you? What else are you working on?
Outside of my BBC 1Xtra show, I am currently working on exhibition around the artist Paul Robeson, further developing the Assata’s Chant and Other Histories archive collection, a short documentary for Radio 4’s short cuts which is due to air in November and I am about to start a new job at an archive. Nello is also still running workshops with a number of educational institutes and we have upcoming audio work with the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre.
Keep up to date with the Art Assassins by following them on Instagram.
This project is supported through a British Academy Innovation Fellowship led by Principal Investigator, Dr Patria Roman-Velazquez, King’s College London, in partnership with South London Gallery
