CARGO in Bristol: 40 years of St Pauls' riots

One of the writer who left a mark on my recent complete move to Bristol last autumn is definitely Lawrence Hoo. Poet and producer, he has released a book named CARGO, to be transformed into films and immersive projects.

An ambitious programme to address Bristol's history and Britain's memory of the colonial past and the slave trade.

The first film will be out tomorrow, to commemorate the riots that occurred in St Pauls in 1980, 40 years ago this Thursday.

Details here:

The CARGO team have used a combination of archive, animation, typography and specially shot material to create a sequence which explores some first hand perspectives of people who lived in St Pauls and witnessed the uprising.

We hear their voices and see their faces as they recount first hand memories of the event.

The film will be available to watch for free on the CARGO website on April 2. 

CARGO©

Growth Beyond Constraint 

The key building blocks of the CARGO experience have always been empowerment though education. Our aim is to offer up an alternative narrative to the often under-represented timeline of the transatlantic slave trade. We not only wanted to portray an accurate historical account of the people who fought for the freedom of the enslaved, and for their subsequent human and civil rights. We wanted to highlight the strength and resilience of key pivotal characters who blazed a trail battling adversity and laying the foundations for the futures we all share as a result. 

Nanny of The Maroons, Mary Seacole, and Marcus Garvey: all people who worked within unimaginable confines but continued to inspire and empower others through their actions. The chains were ever present but the refusal to be shackled is a thread that runs throughout the exhibition. The desire and ability of these figurehead to work with the severe restrictions that surrounded them and not just survive but go on to change the course of history, is a theme at the heart of CARGO. Another strong theme within the exhibition is one of travel and forced repatriation. This idea has a modern relevance within our current global society as wars and famine now force people from their once secure homes. 


The Experience
The CARGO experience will take the form of a solid mobile exhibition space. This will manifest in the form of four generic steel shipping containers. The parallels with the transatlantic slave trade are obvious, but the challenge and goal for us was to create a modular and portable multimedia exhibition space that could transport its audience while fixed to the ground. We want to utilise the now ubiquitous shipping container and its confines and constraints to create an experience without boundaries. 

We will use the latest technology to transform a series of rigid steel boxes into a truly ground-breaking exhibition experience that plays with the themes of transport and containment. As well as moving its audience metaphorically and emotionally we plan for the containers themselves to be transported and installed at a range of locations throughout the UK and Europe over the course of its activation.

We will use a combination of two twenty foot containers alongside two forty foot containers and arrange them in the form of a rectangle. The containers will be connected to form a continuous loop.   

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