Note: This is the second of two scheduled lectures that will bring Headlands Center for the Arts to CCA. Learn more about Headlands Center for the Arts

[See also Artists' Talk with Liam Young: Sustainable Urbanist Talk on November 14.]

The Otolith Group are fall 2011 artists in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. An influential London-based artist's collective, The Otolith Group's collaborative and discursive practice questions the nature of documentary history across time by using material found within a range of disciplines, working across photography, film, text, video and sound.

In 2010 The Otolith Group was nominated for the tenth Turner Prize. Taking its name from part of the inner ear, which establishes our sense of gravity and orientation, The Otolith Group is an artist-led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun that integrates film and video making, artists writing, workshops, exhibition curation, publication, and developing public platforms for the close readings of the image in contemporary society.

The Group's work is formally engaged with exploring the legacies and potentialities of documentary practice, the essay film, postcolonial archives, cosmopolitan modernisms and science fictions.

Nationally and internationally, the Group has curated and co-curated work at film festivals, programs, and exhibitions, including Harun Farocki. 22 Films: 1968-2009 at Tate Modern; The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of The Black Audio Film Collective 1982-1998, and the touring program Protest conceived as part of The Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema, commissioned by the Independent Cinema Office.

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Photo source: Houssam Mchaiemch (photographer); The Otolith Group, still from performance Communists Like Us, Beirut 2010