Vol I, After Kenneth Little by Richard Hylton

“Listening to the recordings of plural voices reading Bloom’s introduction to Little’s book with diverse accents, stutters, pauses and breaths, we come to pause and stutter our own normative understandings of history and chronology, collapsing the order of dates this text started with. We come to hear, as in sense, the infrastructure and ideologies of this purposeful system of conflict.” —Salomé Voegelin

“Choosing the Introduction to the republished 1972 edition of Negroes in Britain for this fascinating project is of central importance. Black Britain was being brought into existence by the British-born or raised children of the Windrush generation, emerging into adolescence as young Black Britons in the early 1970s.” —Eddie Chambers

An evening of listening and discussion with Richard Hylton, joined by Dr Althea Rivas (chair) and respondents Tom Denman (art critic) and Paul Nataraj (artist), Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre (BGLT), SOAS, 6.30-8.30pm.

Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little is a participatory spoken-word work. Thirty-seven volunteers read consecutive excerpts from the American sociologist Leonard Bloom’s introduction to the 1972 edition of Kenneth Little’s Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society. Bloom argued that Little’s book brought hitherto unseen nuance to the study of immigration. It was originally published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1948, a year now fabled as the beginning of the ‘Windrush generation’. Little’s study, however, focused on the impact of immigration on Butetown, the dock area of Cardiff, Wales during the interwar years of the twentieth century. Nicknamed Tiger Bay, this district was noted for its multiethnic population, drawn from Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, and for being the epicentre of notorious race riots in 1919.

With the practice of anthropological field recordings in mind, Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little considers, not histories of societies and cultures of faraway people and faraway lands, but instead those closer to home. Drawing from a formidable archive of literature, Public Library UK Vol I excavates histories, terminologies, and observations which are both archaic and prescient. Perennially reprised, centuries old anxieties around immigration and race relations, often odious and futile, are given new perspectives here. In Public Library UK Vol I the non-professional readers deliver passages modulated by varying accents and intonations. Although not visible, they are as much the subject of the work as the words they utter.

Information
Devised and produced by Richard Hylton, Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little is a limited-edition work, produced as two 140g vinyl LPs presented in an extensively illustrated gatefold design including illuminating liner notes, Public Library—Some Considerations by Eddie Chambers and, Sonic Fictions of Unsettlement by Salomé Voegelin. Eddie Chambers is David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, and Salomé Voegelin is Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK. The album’s pressing was made possible through a Research Culture Award from SOAS.

Readers
Simon Aeppli, Elizabeth Baxter, David Blackmore, Katherine Boxall, Jim Burbidge, Judy Campion, Dal Chodha, Ellie Doggett, Maren Hahnfeld, Simon Harper, Paula Harris, Stuart Hilton, Richard Hylton, Kay Hylton, Sashi Kahlon, Victoria Kelley, Alison Manning, Lisa Moore, Saima Mustaq, Simon Olding, Philip Osborne, Chrissie Ralph, Jeremy Ralph, Elle Reynolds, Laura Rowe, Kate Street, Ivy Tessmann, Mia Thurnhill, Reuben Thurnhill, Urjuan Toosy, Ellie Turner, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, Fiona White, James Wright.

Devised, Produced and Recorded: Richard Hylton / Sound editing: Oliver Schmidt / Photoshop images: Reuben Thurnhill / Design: Urjuan Toosy.

Richard Hylton is an art historian, curator, artist and writer. He teaches at SOAS, London and has written extensively on contemporary art. His book Donald Rodney: Art, Race and the Body Politic is published by Bloomsbury in 2025.

To buy: Public Library UK Vol I, After Kenneth Little, 2024 is available to purchase online from publiclibrary.uk for 55 GBP (P&P included for UK), International shipping fees apply. For more information please contact: public [​at​] publiclibrary.uk.