Version city: Small Axe, London and the archive

Small Axe, directed by Steve McQueen for BBC / Amazon Studios, was released in the UK and US over Autumn-Wintser 2021/22. Across five films it acknowledges events and records experiences of African Caribbean populations in London during the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with members of the production team and mise-en-scène analysis, our aim is to understand how Small Axe contributes to the production of urban history by drawing upon archives and repurposing a cinematic archive for future use. It is an example of what Hal Foster calls ‘archival art’. The first part of our analysis, on poiesis, considers the archival work carried out in the production of Small Axe; the second, on aisthesis, contemplates the anthology’s configuration of a specific space and its framing of a particular sphere of experience. Our argument is that Small Axe constitutes a ‘versioning’ of London’s post-WWII black history, a recombination of archival elements into a new sensorial archive. The concept of ‘version’ is taken from dub reggae and refers to new takes on, or versions of, pre-written and recorded tracks, involving innovative levels of modification and creative interpretation and/or translation for new audiences.